


Little By Little

by borntosik



Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Genre: F/M, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 11:14:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 36,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6702469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/borntosik/pseuds/borntosik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Random stories about Rae and Finn’s childhood, experiencing whatever comes to their lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Finn! Rae! Time for lunch!" Said Linda from inside the house.

It was summer time, and it has been a few days since they could enjoy the new plastic pool the Earl put in the garden. Gary told Finn about it and the only thing he remembers afterwards is putting Finn his swimsuit because they were going to the Earl's house. It wasn't a surprise Rae hugged Finn when they saw each other and ran through the house to the back of it to show the new welcomers the new pool. Finn was there every day and night. And it was a normal thing, because they had grown up together. They had known each other since Rae was born.

Linda and Gary met at college when they were younger, and their friendship lasted until now. They experienced Gary's divorced and Rae's father leaving Linda with a note. It was natural that their own sons would be friends too. They were like brother and sister, sometimes. You could say it when Finn came from school one day covered in scratches and bruises. "What happened, Finn?" Asked his father, worried because some boys were hitting his poor baby boy of seven years old. "Nothing." And after that, a phone call from the headmaster of the school, saying Finn, again, hit some of his schoolmates. "What did I tell you about hitting your friends, Finn?" "It were them, Dad. They were saying bad things to Rae!" Every conversation ended in the same way. _Rae_.

Back to the present, the kids went after Linda. They sat in the kitchen table and ate all their food, wanting to finish everything so they could go back to the pool. They didn't even change themselves in a more comfortable clothes. Being in swimsuit was the trending thing in the house the last past days.

"Can we go back to the pool, Aunt Linda?" Yes, she was like an Aunt for Finn. The same as Gary was for Rae, his adorable Uncle.

"Not until you let the food go down... You need to rest a bit. It's time for a nap, you two..."

"But..." Said the younger ones at the same time.

"No buts... Go upstairs or you won't put a foot in the pool for the rest of the summer..."

Although she was only joking, the children went upstairs. They did that a lot before having the pool in the house. They sat on Rae's bed, expecting to fall asleep but they never did. They talked about school, about what they had seen in tv last night, the film they wanted to watch at the cinema...

Linda came in after an hour, commanding them to get dressed because she had to go to the supermarket. They refused. Not to go outside, but changing their clothes. And that's how Linda had to drive two crazy children with only their swimsuit to the market. When they enter the place, Linda told them to be near the trolley, but they never listened. Finn grabbed Rae by her hand and looked at her mother.

"I'm bored. Let's go somewhere else!"

They both left Linda checking the prices of some shampoos and ran through the supermarket, avoiding the older nannies and bald men they found in their way to the toys corner. It was a full aisle with the newest toys. Finn grabbed a ball and put it in the floor, shooting it to Rae. After a few minutes playing, Finn put the ball where it was before while Rae was checking the rest of toys. She stoop up in front of a doll: a _Barbie doll_.

"Your mum doesn't buy you one?" Said Finn. Rae nodded.

"No. But I don't want any. They are ugly..." They both looked at the blonde doll, laughing out loud. "Let's check the rest!"

They went to some plastic cars and start running with them around the aisle, not noticing someone was calling them. The bodyguard came after them, and they started to run, looking for Linda. It was gonna be difficult to find her because they were in the opposite place of the grocery shop.

"You two! Hey! STOP!!" Said the man in black.

They kept running, until another man in black stopped them by putting himself against them.

"What we have here, Josh? Two lost children... Has Peter Pan forgotten about you?" The older men grabbed them by their hands, walking through all the aisles until they went to the information corner in the supermarket. "Hello! Please, pay attention. We have here two little children. A boy and a girl around theirs seven. We invite the parents to come to the information booth and pick them up. They're just wearing their swimsuits. Please, the parents of two kids in swimsuit, come and pick up your children."

Linda wasn't paying much attention to what they were saying through tannoy, until she could hear clearly the kids were wearing their swimsuits.

"Rachel..." She said in a low voice. "I'm gonna murder those kids..."

She left the trolley in the same spot where she was and she went after them. They were playing at some game with their hands, not expecting Linda was angry as hell when they saw her.

"You two are grounded for life." Said Linda, apologizing for all the troubles her "children" had done to the place. The men in black didn't say much, just to be careful next time. There wouldn't be a next time with those kids. "Now, go back to the trolley. If you leave again, there won't be no pool... I'll throw it up to the bin." They grabbed Linda's hands and went shopping.

When they had to come back home, they had to remove their swimsuits. The two kids went to Rae's room for the second time that afternoon and grabbed their clothes. They undressed themselves, leaving the small pieces of clothing in the floor. It was inevitable to catch some things in the other's body. They weren't the same. It was obvious. And they always did that. Paying attention at something they shouldn't. They were at that age that kept them curious about everything. They asked. They answered. That was the thing. They were conscious about the fact that they were a _girl_ and a _boy_. They were growing up and things would change soon.

"Is that comfortable, Finn?" Said Rae while putting her knickers.

"Yes. And you? Is it weird not having penis?"

"No... But... I'd feel weird if I had that between my legs..."

"You can't notice... You get used to it."

"Finn...?"

"What?"

"Can I... Can I touch it?"

He shrugged his shoulders. It was sort of bizarre how the situation was turning into. It's not something he cared, but it was weird. But it was Rae. He didn't have to be afraid of doing nothing he didn't want to. She stretched her hand out to his legs, and being as carefully as she could, she touched with her fingertips the skin of his penis. A second later, she moved her hand away.

"Ugh... It's weird..." She chuckled, grabbing the dress to cover herself.

Finn put himself his underpants, watching Rae while she was getting dressed. He put his t-shirt and trousers afterwards, and helped Rae with the zip of her dress. They went downstairs, asking Linda if they could watch the cartoons on telly, leaving what happened upstairs between them.


	2. Chapter 2

"Why don't you come to mine?" Said Finn while he sat on the sofa, eating his sandwich and speaking through the telephone.

"Mum won't let me go. I need to help her get some stuff from the shop after she arrives from hospital..." Rae, drinking a glass of water, answered from the kitchen. She arrived earlier from school because the teacher couldn't come, so they let them go home. When she entered the kitchen a few minutes ago, she read a note Linda wrote before heading to work. _'Rae, I'll pick you up after school. I need to buy a few things and I need your help. Love, mum. X'_ So she couldn't leave.

"C'mon. My dad's not home until t'night. We could go and rent a film and get some popcorn and relax..." He learned to be persuasive at the age of nine, and that caused most of the Earl's rows.

"I don't know, Finn..."

"C'mon. I won't tell her anything. You can call her from here and tell her we're doing homework... Please, Rae..." This eleven year old boy had given Rae her first headaches.

After a couple of minutes, she said yes. And she would choose the film, of course. Rae took her backpack and headed to Finn's. There he was, waiting for her at the doorstep. He let her come in, and took her jacket and put it in a chair in the dining room.

"Call your mum..." He pouted.

_"Hello?"_

"Hiya... Can I speak to Mrs. Earl, please? I'm Rachel. Her daughter..."

_"Yeah, sure. Please, wait a minute. I'll look for her..."_

Rae waited as she was told, looking at Finn from the corner of her eye.

_"Hello?"_

"Hi mum, it's me, Rae..."

_"Hello! Is something wrong? Something happened, love?"_

"No! No... It's just... I'm at Finn's. We're gonna do homework together at his place. I was just calling you to let you know where I am."

_"But Rae... I left you a note... I need to pick up some things..."_

"We have loads of things to do, mum... I promise I won't be late."

_"Okay, fine. But I'll be waiting for you at 7 for dinner. Don't be late, Rae!"_

"Fine..."

Finn held his hand, waiting for a high-five from Rae. They smiled and went to the door. Finn grabbed his keys and they walked to the video shop. They started picking up some of the VHSs. Some action films, some romantic films... It was hard to pick one. They walked through all the shop, until the sales man spoke to them.

"Are you looking for anything in special, lads?"

"We want to rent a nice film..."

"What kind of films do you like?"

"I don't know... What do you like, Rae?" Finn turned around to catch a glance at Rae, who was holding a VHS. "Do you want to get _The Goonies_?"

"Yeah. Why not?" She smiled, giving the film to the seller.

 

"Why _The Goonies_?" They were walking home after buying some sweets to eat in the middle of the film. Finn was checking the cover, not that he didn't like the film. Not at all. It was a film he used to watch when he was so little.

"I don't know. It's been a long time since I watched it. I just wanted to remember, I think." She smiled briefly, checking the cover as well. It was the same one as the cinema poster. That drawn cover with all the kids and the pirate skull...

When they arrived at Finn's place, he took off his trainers. Rae did the same. They ran through the corridor and sat comfortably on the sofa. He grabbed the VHS and put it in the VCR. For their luck, they had to wind back the tape. That was the thing about renting a film in the video shop, you wouldn't know if the VHS was ready or not. If only someone invented something that needn't have to be rewinded... They waited about 5 minutes to the tape to be ready, as they put above themselves some blankets and prepared juices and the sweets they bought before.

And the moment the film began, you couldn't hear nothing but their breath and their mouths full of food. They laughed, they feared, they saddened... Until the scene where Brandon and Andy kissed. It was the first time they had seen a kiss like that. _Alone._ They've always been with their parents when the kissing scenes appeared on the telly screen. But it was the first time they were experiencing that feeling. The urgent to know what a kiss was like.

"Have you kissed someone, Rae?" Said Finn in a low voice. He didn't know why he asked, he just wanted to know if she did. He wasn't curious of knowing if she had experienced that, but he could be a bit jealous because he didn't kiss a girl yet.

She said nothing. She didn't even look at him. As if she hadn't heard what he just said.

"I've not kissed anyone, yet." He shrugged, paying attention to the screen. He ate some of the last sweets that were in the box and stood up, excusing himself for going to the loo. When he came back to the living room, there was no sight of Rae. "Rae?"

The film finished a few seconds ago. He could see the ending credits on the tv screen and he heard some noise on the entrance. Rae was putting her shoes on.

"Are you leaving?" He said.

"Yeah. I should probably go home... My mum's waiting for me..."

"You can stay a bit longer if you want to. Your mum knows we're here doing homework..."

"No, it's fine. I should go..." She said without looking at him.

Finn grabbed her hand, standing still beside her.

"Let's go upstairs and do our homework, Rae... We don't have many. We can finished them in less than an hour and then, you leave..."

She bit her bottom lip, and nodded, putting the bag pack on her shoulders and leading to his room. She immediately sat on his chair, as Finn grabbed another one from his father's room. They unpacked their books and started doing their English essay.

"Could you lend me the pencil sharpener, Finn?" Rae said while taking the broken lead from the pencil.

Finn gave her the sharpener, waiting for her until she finished. She put the pencil trash aside and returned to her task of writing her essay. On one side, Rae was finishing her English homework. She was good in English. She liked learning new vocabulary and read books to improve her language. She understood everything. On the other hand, Finn was opening his math’s book. He was crap at maths. He was as dumb as a sack of doorknobs. He could try to equal 2 and 2 and the result would turn into decimals. That's why Rae always tried to help him as much as she could. Finn, as always, asked for help with his first problem.

"Okay. Let me check the problem first..."

She read the formulation, checking some of the last pages where they could read how to resolve it.

"You have to divide, Finn..."

"Yeah, but I don't know how to do it..."

"Haven't you been paying attention in class?" Although Rae was in a lower class, she always loved maths. She was the smartest student in her promotion and the teacher was always giving her formulations to resolve at home, Sudoku...

"Not really... I'm crap at all of this."

"Well, the formulation is telling you: You have 120 books, and they're divided in 6 different shelves. That means you have to divide. Do you understand that?"

"Yeah... Suppose..."

"And you have to find out how many books there are in each shelf..."

"Yeah, right..."

"So..." Rae grabbed a new piece of paper where she could draw her math calculation. She wrote 120 on the left. Then, she wrote the L line and after that, she put the number 6 inside of the letter. "It has to be like this... You know why I did it, don't you?"

He nodded, not paying attention at her explanation at all.

"Then, the only thing you have to do is to find numbers to multiplicate with 6 and the result has to be you the first number of the division. This would be 2, because if you multiply 6 and 2, the result is 12. So you put a zero under it, and because you only have a zero, you just multiply again. 6 per 0 is 0, right? So the answer to the pr-..."

But she couldn't end the sentence. Finn had put his hand right above her cheek, drawing her towards him and putting his lips against her own. He didn't know why he did it. He just felt the need to do it. Finn pecked her lips a couple of times, not forgetting what he saw in The Goonies before. Her lips were sweet and soft because of the amount of sugar they ate downstairs, something he enjoyed it. He was expecting something disgusting, something with a bad taste in his tongue... but he was wrong. He could have notice the taste of cherry in her lips. That sweetness and sourness at the same time... He withdrew from her, sitting correctly in his chair while drawing drafts on his maths paper. After a long and quiet minute, she spoke again.

"Twenty..."

"Wha'?"

"The resolution is twenty..." She said more loudly, licking her lips.

"Oh, yeah, yeah... 'Course..."

He wrote what she had drown before in the paper and when he finished, he read the next formulation. 20 minutes later and with all their homework done, Gary came home. He didn't expect to see Rae on Finn's room, so she told him she came to help Finn with his homework and that she had to leave. Linda was waiting for her to come home. Mr. Nelson gave her a lift to the Earl's house. Finn, who was watching them through the kitchen window, smiled at them while they left.


	3. Chapter 3

"Wow you need to check it, Rae! It's brilliant!" Finn said while he was grabbing her hand and heading upstairs.

"I hope it's worth it. My mum was gonna drive me to buy some new clothes in exchange of nothing..."

"It will be!"

When they enter the room, Finn went to one of the corners and pick a big brown box full of dirt and dust. He put it over the bed and gave her a quick look.

"C'mon. Have a look!" He said with a big smile in his face.

 

_Gary and Finn had this weekend we all have where you go to the garage and just check everything out. The Nelson's garage was full of stuff and Gary planned on throwing some of the boxes they weren't using, although that meant an exhausting weekend looking and saving and throwing everything. And it wasn't a small garage... It was enough space for two cars and a small space where Nelson Senior kept some of the tools for his car. And on the other side of the place, it was a big wardrobe... full of clothes, and boxes piled up in one side. The last time he cleaned all of it, it was after Finn's mum left a few years ago. He could probably have some of her stuff there that he kept (because he had a small hope that she could come back in a few weeks, or months... although she didn't)._

_"Finn, help me with all of this, please."_

_Finn, who was on the sofa, stood up and went after his father._

_"Why do you need me, da'?"_

_"I'm cleaning all this mess. Help me, son. Maybe you'll find something you want or you don't want. And the rest, I'll give it to charity or church or whoever is in need of some of these..."_

_Finn caught all the boxes accumulated on a pile and opened them all. Some of them were full of small clothing. He supposed there were from him when he was little. After two boxes checked, he grabbed another one and saw a plastic bathtub, some toys like that teddy bear he used to love when he was in his three and a pair of small shoes. He smiled, remembering his Nan bought them one afternoon that they went out alone. He grabbed them and put them aside. He grabbed the rest of the stuff and put all of it where his father was putting the stuff he was gonna throw away._

_"What's in them?"_

_"Jus' 'tuff from when I was little. Clothes and all that. Give them all to charity. They'll give them more use than us, won't they?"_

_More boxes were unpacked that day. Some of them still with clothes from Finn, some of Gary, and of course, some of Finn's mother. Those ones were crossed with a black and big C so they could know they were clothes to give. After two more hours of exhausting work, he could rest, but not for a long period. He ate a sandwich in the garage while was putting different letters in the checked boxes to differentiate from the others._

_"... my Lord!"_

_Finn turned around, staring at his father with a questioning face._

_"I thought I gave them away!"_

_Gary sat on the floor, opening the box he had in his hand and checking what was in the inside of it. Finn approached him and saw it was a full amount of vinyl. It must be Gary's music collection._

_"Finn... You don't know what's in here, son. My true love..." He said, laughing loudly._

_"So that's why mum left... because you were cheating on her with your... true love..." Finn learnt it was wrong to feel bad about his mum, so he just laughed at everything that was involved with her. She didn't contact in years. She was just... a woman. He wasn't gonna be the boy who was crying because his mum left when he was a poor child..._

_"I didn't want you to find out like this, son... But it's the truth..."_

_The two of them laughed again, and Finn sat beside his father. The two of them checked all the vinyl. Half an hour had past and they were still checking the set lists._

_"Can we keep them, da'? I wanna use them..."_

_Gary shrugged, then, he smiled widely._

_"It would be a pity to give them away... That would mean I didn't do a great job with you, son... Keep them save. Those boxes cost millions of pounds..."_

_Finn grabbed the three boxes full of vinyl and landed to his room, leaving them there, in the corner._

 

"Those... those are..."

"Yes! And I have another two boxes full of vinyl records! My dad was keeping them in the garage... what a twat!"

"You have a full collection in here. It will take us at least a week to check them all!"

"Summer is long enough..." Finn gave her his biggest smile, and grabbed the rest of the boxes. He opened them after leaving them against the other one in the bed. "Amazing stuff is hiding in these dirty boxes..."

Rae checked some of the vinyl, reading names like _Depeche Mode, Dire Straits, New Order, Aerosmith, Iggy Pop, Scorpions, Status Quo, Metallica, The Pretenders, U2, Joan Jett, REM, Queen, Led Zeppelin..._ She grabbed the Queen one. Everybody knew what Queen was, and it was something she listened to in the radio every day. Since the day the main singer _Freddie Mercury_ , died, his songs were the only thing you could hear. In every shop. They weren't conscious of what that band did for the world. She read the amount of songs that included and left it in the box. She grabbed another one, a Freddie Mercury one, called _Barcelona_.

"Have you listened to this one?" He deny it.

"My father showed me that one a few years ago... It's pretty cool, though"

She put it aside, searching for more bands and songs she could check. Finn grabbed two of the Scorpions vinyls and handed them to Rae.

"You should check these two. It's from a German band... My da' says they're amazing."

"So... What are we waiting for?" She winked at him, and grabbed the vinyls she liked and headed downstairs, where Gary had the record player in the living room. Finn took a box before going there, so they could change a band if they didn't feel like it.

 _Bad boys running wild_ started playing through the big speakers on the floor. They moved their heads to the sound of the song. It wasn't really their thing, but it was cool. More songs were heard that afternoon _. Rock you like a hurricane, I'm leaving you, Coming home... Big city lights_ was a nice song to hear too, but the song Rae liked the most was the one that closed the album: _Still loving you._ It was a relaxing song. The drums were strong but slow at the same time. The voice of the singer was softer than the rest of the songs played in the vinyl... Rae definitely felt in love with that song.

"There is one album I wanted to show you... I couldn't believe it when my da' told me but it's true... Do you remember _Labyrinth?_ "

" _Labyrinth_? The Film?"

Finn showed her the cover of one of David Bowie's vinyls.

"Is... is he? He's the Goblin King, Finn! I didn't know he was a singer..."

"That's what I thought... My dad told me before he is actually a singer. A good one. And very famous!"

"I can't believe it... I used to like him so much when I was little..."

They kept looking more of the vinyls Finn had on the box, playing most of them while Gary was still in the garage, cleaning the rest of things that were left.

"Do you want something for drink or eat, Rae?" Said Finn while he was standing up, pointing at the kitchen.

"An orange juice, if you'd be so kind..." She kept looking at him, fixing her eyes in something he had on his trousers pocket. When he came back with two glasses full of orange juice and two sandwiches, Rae went to grab his pocket. "What do you have here...?"

"Oi!" Finn laughed loudly when he felt Rae's hand going near his man parts. Rae hide her hand behind her back, although her eyes were still on his trousers.

"What's that?"

Finn grabbed his bootees and hid them behind his back, the same pose Rae had.

"It's nothing..."

"C'mon... show me..."

"Just something my Nan bought me..."

"What is it?"

She smiled widely, crossing her arms under her breasts. After two minutes waiting for him to show what it was hidden behind his back, Finn left his bootees beside her, driving his gaze somewhere lost in the garden. When Rae took a sight of what it was, she couldn't smile more.

"Are they yours?"

"Yeah..."

"They're cute..."

"My Nan bought them to me when I was a new-born. She told me once we used to go to the park and when we had to come back, we always passed Eddie's shop. Do you remember his shoes shop? And well... She thought I would look better with them. And there they are, now."

"And why do you keep them on your pockets?"

"Oh, because I found them in a box on the garage. We were throwing everything out, and I wanted to keep these as a memory..."

Rae stared at them for a while, imagining Finn's memories with his Nan. She was a lovely woman. She have met her before... She was always buying them some sweets and chocolate when she was aware Rae was coming to the Nelson's house.

"You can keep them if you want to..." Said Finn, watching her carefully.

"What? No... They’re yours... Why would I...? No, no..."

"I mean it. At least, you can keep it one. The other one is for me... If you like it that much."

"It would be disrespectful... Thank you, but they're from your Nan. They were for you..."

"It's fine, Rae. Now one of these... is yours."

"Are you sure?"

"One hundred per cent."


	4. Chapter 4

Finn heard the postman was on his door. He opened it and told him to give Finn the letters. As soon as he had them, he checked if there was something for him. It was weird to receive something, but Rae and he had this little joke to send each other stupid letters to have some fun. Letters from bank accounts, the gym, some advertisement... And then, a letter with no return address and it hadn't any name. Rae had done it again. It wasn't the first time she didn't write her name just... Because. He closed the door, saying his goodbyes to the postman and left his father's letters over the kitchen's table. He went up to his room, closing the door in the process. He broke the paper, grabbing what was the content of it and sat on his bed.

_'Hello Finnley,  
It's mum.'_

Finn turned pale in an instance. It was a letter from his mother. He didn't hear of her for years and he was wondering why she was writing to him. He assumed months ago his father and that woman kept in touch, but why bothering to write something directly to him?

' _How are you, love? I hope you're good, as I am.'_

Who asked her? He didn't give a shit about how she was or what she wanted.

_'I guess you're wondering why I am writing you this letter. I was going to call you, but I thought it wouldn't go as I want this to be. So a letter would be better. If I called, it's a fact your father wouldn't let me be in touch with you again, I suppose.'_

So... That thing was because she didn't want Gary to know. To know that she wanted to be in contact with her son.

_'The main point of this is to let you know that I'm ready. I'm ready to come back. I want you in my life, Finn. I regret every second I haven't spent with you by your side.'_

Finn had to leave the room or his mood would trash the place. And he (and specially his father) wouldn't like that. Why would she write him? He was expecting something like those faked love letters Rae used to send him when she was bored. But he was wrong. He thought he could deal with his mother issue, but the fact was, he couldn't. A tear scaped from his right eye, although he wiped it away quickly.

_'I can't wait to hear from you, sweetheart._

_Love from,  
Mum.'_

He read the last few words the letter contained, though it was hard because some of his tears were almost escaping his almond eyes.

_'PS. My phone number is 0044.161.359.148 Call me if you need to x'_

Why? He asked to himself. Why was she doing that to him? He was almost forgetting her and now, this. She wasn't gonna be getting away with it. He crumpled the piece of paper on his hand and ran downstairs. He grabbed the phone with the other hand and started typing the number written on the postdate. Some tones but no answer. He waited until the sound of the voicemail showed up.

"I don't want you in my life anymore. I don't wanna see you, I don't want your letters, and I don't wanna know how you are... Don't try to keep in touch with me, because I have no mum. Leave me alone!" Said a Finn with his voice cracked. He hung up the phone and went again to his room, where he'd be there waiting for his father to come home.

Finn felt completely tired in a mere of seconds, but he couldn't sleep. He tried closing his eyes but the only thing he was thinking about was that letter. The one that was keeping in his hands. Not that he wanted it, but he'd show it to his father. And afterwards, they'd take a decision about everything.

Gary came home a bit late. He screamed for his son's name, but didn't get an answer. He headed upstairs and knocked on his son's door.

"Finn? Are you here?" Said while he opened the door widely.

He had bought pizza for the two of them because they had this football match night and he had a big smile for his son because those days were the ones he enjoyed the most. Just the two of them doing something they both enjoyed. Finn was giving his back to his dad, but he turned around when he heard the sound of the door cracking. All the joy and happiness he had all day, changed when he saw his son's face. All wet and his redden eyes.

 "What has happened, Finn?" Gary approached him and sat beside him.

Finn gave his father the trashed letter, waiting for him to read it. When he fully opened and read the first few words, he stared at his son. He started caressing his hair, still reading the piece of paper. When he finished, Finn was standing up on his side, waiting for an answer. Waiting for the final resolution.

"I called her, Da'..." He saw how a shameful tear escaped from his son's eye, and he hugged him.

 

Rae knocked on the Nelson's door, waiting until one of the two owners of the house would open it. A long minute passed and no one was coming. She knocked again with more force, and after ten seconds, she could hear from outside how someone was running from the stairs. She waited until the door was being opened by a drawn Finn. She faked a smile, because her best friend wasn't looking so good for the past two days. He didn't tell her anything, and she won't ask unless he really wants her to know what's going on. Rae learned that through the years. Although they were best friends, Finn liked to keep secrets from people. Not to keep for himself all his life, but to keep himself from the world. He didn't like to be judged, and people knowing stuff about him meant being vulnerable. That's why it was hard for him to tell stuff to Rae. He needed time to process everything. He already spoke with his Dad, and it was a matter of time Rae would know. He had to tell her before her mum did.

Gary opened the door, letting Rae in.

"How are you, Rae? Everything okay?"

"Perfect, Gary...Is Finn in?"

"Yeah, he's upstairs. Make yourself comfortable."

Rae went upstairs, knocking at Finn's door, waiting for an answer. He didn't say anything. She came in, watching no one was in the room, so she sat in his armchair, wondering where Finn was. A couple of minutes after, he appeared with a towel in his hands, drying his hair with it.

"Oh, hiya..." He said.

"Hi..."

"I thought I wouldn't see you anytime today..."

"I was just passing..."

He shrugged, landing the towel over the bed while he was buttoning his jeans. Rae kept quiet waiting for Finn to initiate a conversation that never came. It was difficult to maintain Rae quiet in a room with Finn, as she was always banging about something.

"Do you want to play some music?"

"Yeah, sure..."

Finn put a random vinyl on the record player, grabbing the needle and putting over it. The switched it on and waited a second to listen the first tones.

"So..."

Finn turned around and stared at Rae, nodding once to make her continue what she wanted to say. Nevertheless, Rae directed her eyes to something that was over the table. A paper ball. Finn saw what she was watching and went to throw it in the bin next to the door.

"Some papers from school..."

"Cool..."

And then, another moment of silence. Rae started playing with her fingers to keep her entertained.

"Finn..."

"Hm?"

"Are you gonna tell me what's going on?" She didn't want to say it, but the last few days Finn wasn't being the same. She didn't want to force the situation between them, and she wanted to make sure he was alright. She was no gossip nor nosy. She was just worried about her friend.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. That's what I want you to tell me..."

"Nothing to be worried about, alright?"

"Don't treat me as if I was some lad in school, Finn..."

"I said it's _nothing_."

"Alright, whatever..." Rae stood up from the armchair and grabbed her things, wearing her jacket again and walking to the door, not bothering of saying goodbye to Finn nor looking at him.

"Where are you going?"

"Home."

"Why?"

"When you have the balls to tell me what's wrong with you, I'll speak to you properly. Now, I'm leaving."

Rae put her bag pack on her shoulder and went to grab the doorknob when she heard a quiet sob. "Please, don't go..." She turned herself around, staring at him from the doorway. She step up and left the bag again on the floor, walking until she was in front of her friend. She hunkered down by his side and held his hands. She caressed them with her thumb fingertips. Rae could feel a tear fall from his face, and then she sat beside him on the bed. She was still holding one of his hands while she put the other one on his back, stroking it. "The paper on the bin... It's a letter from my mum" He finally said, burst into tears.

"Oh Finn..." Rae pushed him against her, giving her best hug. It was her first time. Her first time being the broken side of her best friend.

Finn didn't like to show his emotions to anyone, not even his father. There were just a few moments like that. When he found out his Nan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, for example. He did not cry in front of Rae, but you could say he wasn't well. He said his Nan was fine, although it would get worse as the time came. His mum forgot about him, and then his Grandma would do the same in a short period of time.

They stayed hugged for five long minutes. Finn was still sobbing when Rae asked him "What did you do?" He raised his head from her shoulder and looked her in the eye, drying his face with the end of his forearm flannel.

"She... she was saying she wanted to come. To come back with me. That... that she missed me and she regrets what had happened in the past. She wrote that she didn't want to call me because my Dad wouldn't let me speak to her... And she gave me her number." He walked past the room until he caught the small bin, grabbing the ball paper and flattened it out. He sat down again beside Rae and showed her the letter. "Here..."

Rae read quietly, catching some gazes of Finn and what it was his reaction about all that mess. Finn looked paled, and he had bags under his eyes. She felt pity for him, and it made her think about her own father. The both of them were raised without a mother and a father in each family, and those matters made it easier to feel bad about oneself. She would probably run after Finn the moment she would see her father's name on the letter. And there he was. After days of assuming everything, he didn't say anything to anyone. Because he didn't want anyone to know how shitty he felt about his mother issue.

"I called her..."

"WHAT?" She was still reading the last words of the paper when she heard that. She had opened her eyes in that way that she seemed a frog.

"I called her, I said..."

"I know what you said..." She blinked briefly, putting the letter aside and driving her body to be more in front of his "What did she say?"

"Not much. I left a message in the voicemail..."

"Well, at least it wasn't-..."

"I said that I don't want her anymore..."

"Wha-...?" She didn't know what to respond at all that information. He stood quiet, avoiding her eyes. "What else did you...?"

"I told her I had no mum..." Afterwards, he broke into tears again. Rae held him until he stopped crying and started speaking once again. "What does she want, Rae? Because if she's looking for the love of his son, she won't have any of it. As if she was my mother... We all know your mum is more my mum than my actual one. I wish she was dead rather than alive somewhere where I can't speak to her. She has no excuse to send me this paper full of bullshit and pretend she didn't abandon us. It wasn't just me, you know? Dad hasn't been good for years. And now she wants to come home again... NO BLOODY WAY!"

Rae stood still, biting her bottom lip as she was listening to Finn's words. Would she say the same things Finn was saying if her dad appeared again? Would she act like this? Would he allow him to come back to her life?

"You're my family, now..." He hugged her, resting his chin over the shoulder. Finn took a deep breath, giving her a quick peck on her naked neck and moved a few inches aside. He looked into her eyes for a mere seconds, not realizing his lips were in hers after. It was an involuntary thing he did, but felt so good. All he needed was feeling himself loved. Being loved for someone he knew he was. He raised his hand above her cheek, caressing it with his palm and fingertips. He moved more over her, colliding his chest with her (still small) breast.

Someone knocked on the door and they parted from each other instantly. Not that they wanted to, but it would be weird to explain to Gary why they were kissing.

"Hey lads! Fancy some tea? Are you gonna join us for dinner, Rae?"

She nodded with a smile, giving a smile back to Finn as she discovered he was smiling too. She put her hand over his arm, caressing it carefully and whispering into his ear " _Tea makes everything alright_ _._ "


	5. Chapter 5

"What were you thinking, then?" Asked Rae while she was looking for something that could fit in Finn looks.

"I dunno... What looks better in me?"

She shrugged. She kept looking, leaving Finn in another aisle. She thought something she liked, too. It was his first time, and he would be wearing that for quite a long time, so it should be nice.

They were both in that age of changes, and being cool in front of other people, and do weird things to gain some new friendships and all that. That's why Rae didn't really like the plan Finn had in mind. She then grabbed two different kind of earrings. They were two perfect balls, covered in fake silver.

"What about these ones?" Said Rae, looking around the shop to find Finn talking with the shop assistant.

Finn, always flirting. He wasn't conscious, but people around him could feel it... That pose, that smile, that way he was doing... everything around girls. Around other girls that weren't Rae, obviously. He turned around, walking towards her. He took the earrings from her hands and rejected them.

"Nah... too... simple..."

"Oh. Fine... Then, pay for these..." She grabbed a random pair of odd woman earrings. They were covered in fake gold, and they were long, 'til the shoulders, Rae thought. With some white crystals at the end that simulated diamonds. They were the ugliest earrings in the whole shop.

Finn laughed and put them in front of Rae's ears.

"I could buy them for you, you kno'..."

"No, I don't... C'mon. Pick a nice ones and let's go... I'm starving."

Rae crossed her arms above her chest and waited until Finn paid for the ones Rae had chosen a few minutes ago. It's not that he was gonna live with them permanently, but he could find some nice ones in the future and he could remove them when he wanted.

They went to the chippy afterwards, ordering some chips and two Cokes. After being served, they ate in silence, until Finn broke the ice.

"Would it be weird to do it, Rae?"

"Do, what?"

"Piercing..."

"If that's what you want..."

"Arnold told me his older brother went to this shop and it wasn't too expensive. But it's done with something like a gun, that pushes the earring inside your ear in a second..."

He ate the last chip on the plate and drank some of his Coke, watching at her intently. They, again, kept quiet while they finished their shared meal. When they had to leave, Finn walked Rae for a while until they were two streets from her house.

"Are you busy this afternoon, Rae?"

"No, unless my mum wants me for anything... You know, I have already plans and she's always telling me to cancel them because she has to buy something, or go somewhere, or whatever."

"Cool, because you're coming to my place."

"Al...right..."

 

She waited until someone would open her the door. She played with her shoes, untying them in the process so she bent down and laced up her converses. Then, Finn opened the door.

"I thought I wasn't from the Royal Court..."

"Dickhead..." She stood up, giving him a quick smile and she came in. They went upstairs, as always they did when they were at someone's place. Finn's room was not as tidy as ever, though it was fine. At least, the bed was tidy.

He put some music on, and Rae left her jacket and bag on one side of the room and sat on the floor. Finn left, excusing himself and going for something for drink and a few more vinyls from downstairs. Rae took advantage of it and searched for a music magazine. When Finn came back, he was bringing two glasses full of Coke and two more vinyls under his right arm. She stood up, helping him with everything and took a sip of one of the glasses, giving the other one back to Finn. He sat beside her on the floor, reading the mag over Rae's shoulder.

"I thought... We could try."

Rae looked at him from the corner of her eye.

"Try... what?"

"Piercing me..."

"And how do you expect you could...?"

"You."

"Me."

"Yes."

"You're insane."

"Yes, I am. But you're helping me."

Finn stood up and left the room again. Rae watched as he was leaving, thinking he was the craziest person in the entire world. Minutes later, Finn was coming back with some needles on his hands. Rae furrowed her brows.

"Finn, I'm not sure I can do this..."

"Don't be silly... It's not going to take more than a few minutes..."

"Why don't you wait until you go somewhere with people who knows how to do it?"

"Because I don't pay £20 for it..." Finn put the needles on Rae's hand and handled her his lighter. Rae furrowed her eyebrows, wondering why she would need a lighter. "It's for the needle. You have to bury the tip... It's more hygienic."

"Right..." Rae went to the loo and cleaned her hands with soup. If she was thinking of doing this, she had to be with her hands completely cleaned. She came to Finn's room a couple of minutes later, and saw Finn putting his fingertip on the top of the needle. "What are you doing?"

"Checking..."

She made fun of him, stealing the needle from Finn's hands and started burning it. She sat by his side, watching carefully where she had to prick. When she raised the needle, Finn hold a breath. She slowly started poking his ear, even it she had no idea how that was going to work. She stopped, not wanting to hurt him with it.

"Are you sure you wanna do this?"

"Yeah... Just, be careful, alright?" Both of them smiled, nodding quickly.

"Tell me if I'm hurting you..."

"It won't be nothing..."

"As if I wasn't putting that thing inside of you, silly..." Rae laughed loudly, not realizing she was poking in Finn's ear tightly.

"AAAAAH!!!!! STOP STOP!!"

Rae threw the needle away.

"God, Finn, I'm really sorry!"

"Be careful, Rae..." He caressed his earlobe with his fingertips, biting his bottom lip at the same time.

"Do you want me to bring some ice?"

"Yes, please..."

Rae headed downstairs, going to the kitchen. She opened the fridge and grabbed a couple of ice cubes, putting them in a rag and heading back upstairs. When she came back, she saw how Finn was still rubbing his ear and couldn't avoid laughing a bit. She handed him the ice and left him do the thing. They kept waiting for a long ten minutes until Finn felt his ear was fully "asleep".

"I think it's ready."

"Are you sure you want to do this, Finn? I mean, we can leave it here..."

"No, no way..."

Rae grabbed the needle and started once again. Finn wasn't feeling anything at all, but how the needle tried to push in his hard flesh. Rae's thumb hurt in the process, because the other end was being stacked in her finger. After two minutes trying, Rae could pock the needle in his flesh: the hardest part was done. She stopped for a second, leaving the pointed thing in his ear and putting one of Finn's t-shirt in her fingers, being a mode of protection.

"What are you doing?" Said Finn staring at her, noticing how the needle was fixed in his body and some blood was running from it.

"Wait a minute. You're not the only one hurt so, keep calm, boy..." Rae took the job back again and finished, with the help of the clothing piece she had in her hand, pushing the needle in Finn's ear.

After everything was done, she took advantage of the ice cubes and cleaned part of the blood he had himself. Rae left the needle in his ear again, standing up and going to the bathroom so she could clean herself.

"Finn? Where did you put the earrings?" She said without coming back. Finn, who was still on the floor, still bleeding and with an ice cube cleaning his neck, answered:

"Downstairs."

He stood up, changing the vinyl and putting one of the Stone Roses. Waterfall sounded through the speakers, and Rae appeared again. With nothing in her hands.

"I don't know where they are... Are you sure you left them downstairs?"

"Yes, 'course.."

They both went downstairs, revising the kitchen and living room, without finding the earrings Finn bought a few hours ago. Finn sat in one of the chairs around the table while Rae did the same. He stared at her, biting the inside of his cheek. He approached her and sat over the table, facing her and putting his hands carefully on her ear, stealing on of her hoop earrings.

"What do you think you're doing?"

Finn walked through the house until he opened the bathroom door. He looked at himself and removed the needle, grabbing the hoop and putting it in himself. Rae was staring him from the doorway, watching how good it look her earring in him.

"You know you'll have to give it back, don't you?"

Finn turned around, smiling as if he was a small child.

"I'm not so sure..."


	6. Chapter 6

Rae was, as always, at Finn's. Gary got used to it a long time ago. It wasn't something he bothered too much. He and Linda were friends for many years and he was happy his son and Linda's daughter got on well.

Today was one of those boring days in Stamford. Finn had been studying on his own in his room, bored, so he called Rae to come over.

" Pleeeease...."

After two more minutes and Finn begging for her to come and help him with history, she picked up the phone and left her house.

"The World War II didn't start when Germany invaded Poland, it's when Japan invaded China." Rae pointed at some texts in Finn's history book, taking a colourful pen and drawing a line under the date and circling the countries.

"Don't know why I'm trying... Guess who's gonna fail..."

"Everyone but you, because I won't leave this house until you memorise everything." Rae crossed her arms under her chest, leaning on the chair she was sat.

She had been an hour sitting in the same chair with Finn reading the same page. History wasn't that difficult. The only thing you had to do was memorise dates and places, that's all. But Finn had never been good at studying. Or anything that involved school at all. She was starting to get bored, and since that morning, she had been feeling pain in her back. Not that it was something serious, but she was feeling a bit bad.

"Are you okay?" Asked Finn, putting his history book aside, staring at Rae who put her hands over her belly. She tightened them over her stomach, and shook her head.

"I think I'm gonna go to the toilet." She stood up, leaving the room and locking herself on the bathroom next to Finn's room.

She put her hands on the sink, breathing heavily and put some cold water in her hands, washing her face afterwards. It felt good, although the pain on her body didn't stop. She turned around while unbuttoning her jeans and taking her knickers down. She sat on the toilet, waiting for peeing. She closed her eyes, while she did her things and grabbed some paper from the shelf. She felt dizzy, and like she was holding up a stone in her back. When she was about to clean herself, she caught something she didn't see before. She again caught more paper, and cleaned herself again. Some blood was on it. She bit her lips, looking for something in that men's bathroom.

"No, no, no..." She whispered to herself.

Rae had had her first period. In Finn's house. In Finn's bathroom. She checked if her knickers were cleaned, but they were covered in blood, so she panicked. She, then, checked her trousers, and for Rae's luck, they were fine. She took a deep breath, standing up from the toilet and starting checking every shelf and cupboard it could be in the room.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" She sweared.

 

Finn kept staring at his bedroom door. Rae had been in the bathroom for more than 5 minutes. She didn't used to take that long in it, but he waited. He had to study history so he had to memorise everything he could without Rae so, when she came again, they could study some other pages.

After 5 more minutes, Finn left his room, stopping at the bathroom's door. He knocked, waiting for Rae's answer. After not hearing her voice, he knocked again, leaning his shoulder on the wall.

"Rae..."

No answer.

"Rae... Are you alright?"

And then, he could hear something. Steps inside the bathroom.

"Give me a minute..."

He waited there, crossing his arms against his chest, biting his cuticles.

 

Rae, on the other side, was still panicking inside the big bathroom. Every cupboard was full of paper, towels, razor blades, aftershave... She was starting to shit herself. What was she going to do? She couldn't go outside and tell Finn: "Hey! I'm peeing blood, do you have any sanitary towel at home?" It was a house full of men (although they were just two: father and son). His mum left ages ago, so it's obvious Gary wouldn't have any of her sanitary stuff in the bathroom. And Finn's grandma... Forget about her having a period.

"Are you okay?" Said Finn, knocking on the door again.

"A minute..." Said Rae looking everywhere, looking for a solution.

"You sure?"

"I'm fine, Finn!!" Rae was getting angry. Finn was stressing her and not finding anything to put on her knickers was driving her to despair. She finally grabbed an amount of toilet paper and put it in her underwear. She adjusted her clothes and looked herself in the mirror.

Why did she have to get her period in Finn's home? Why? Mother Nature hated her. It was a fact. She had done something wrong in her last life and that's the price she was paying as Rae Earl. She maybe was Hitler. Or his wife, Lady Brown. Or Eva, and that was the reason she was punished... for eating that forbidden apple. She wasn't a believer, but in those kind of situations, every possible belief it could be blamed for all of her problems.

She walked a few steps, feeling how the "pad" between her legs was moving quite fast. She took a deep breath, biting her bottom lip and went to open the door. She locked it with the chain, not letting Finn open and coming in.

"Finn..." She said quietly. Finn turned his head around, giving her a brief smile when he finally saw her face.

"You alright?" She nodded, noticing how her face was reddening in a couple of seconds. She had to ask. She couldn't leave the toilet without it. And she hadn't any of them in her bag. _WHYYYYY?_

"I need you to bring me something..."

"Yeah. 'Course... What do you need?"

"I... Do you... I'm in need of something." Finn burrowed his eyebrows, trying to understand what Rae was trying to say by "something".

"What do you want?"

"Something... for me... for ladies, I mean."

Finn wasn't understanding anything.

"I-I don't understand..."

"Something, Finn. For me." Rae said, pointing at her bits.

Finn couldn't see much with the door almost closed. He put his face in the gap, staring at Rae (or at least, what he could see about her. Not much.)

"I've got no idea what you're talking about."

"FOR FUCKS SAKE, FINN! I'M HAVING MY PERIOD! Bring me a sanitary towel, a tampon, anything..." She screamed, still red from embarrassment. That wasn't a topic to talk to Finn. She had to be in her room. Or her bathroom. She'd find whatever she needed in there, not here. In a men's house, with her best mate. A boy.

She closed the door, hearing some footsteps outside the bathroom. She was about to call her friend's name, but she heard the front door being slammed closed.

 

He rang again, feeling quite shy for what he was going to ask for. His neighbours were at home, he could hear them from outside. Someone approaching the door where he was awaiting. Seconds later, there he was: his neighbour. No, not the woman. Her father. That was not going to be easy...

"Hey, Finn!" He said, smiling at the young boy at his doorstep.

"Hiya Mr. Johnson..."

"How are you? What brings you here?"

Finn stood still, quiet, thinking about everything that was happening at his house. His friend there, in his bathroom. How the bloody hell does he ask for something like this? But his mouth spoke before his brain.

"Period."

He didn't realise he said that out loud.

"Excuse me?"

Finn swallowed, staring at the old man that now was looking at him really weird.

"My friend's having a period."

Mr. Jonhson blinking several times, turning around and screaming his wife's name.

"Susaaan! Sort this out, pleeeease!" He step aside and let Finn his way to come inside. "Wait here..." He said, closing the main door.

Finn waited in the hall, staring at Mrs. Johnson when she came after him.

"What's the problem?" She said with a sweet smile in her face. Every time Finn saw her, she was always smiling. It was like she had a serious problem with keeping her cheeks relaxed or something.

Mr. Johnson left the two of them there, leaving the problem to his own wife. Finn, then, thought more carefully what he wanted to say, licking his lips before speaking.

"The thing is... My friend is at home. In the bathroom. We were studying, you know? But the she left and went to the loo and I waited for her. He didn't come out so I decided to call after her and see what was happening. She said she was on a period, I don't really know what that means but she told me to ask for... towels or something like that." He said without taking a break for breathe. He took a deep breath at the end, staring at the old woman. She smiled.

"She's having her period, right?"

"I suppose..."

"I'm gonna take a look for what you're looking for, then." She went to where Finn supposed it was the bathroom, and after waiting a couple of minutes, she came back with a box of sanitary towels and a couple of sticks that Finn didn't know what they were. "I don't know what she uses, so I'll give you the two of them. I'm gonna give you the instructions for the tampons, anyway. In case she needs them." She put everything on a plastic bag and lend it to Finn. "Do you need anything else?"

He denied, saying goodbye and thank you to her and leaving that house. He crossed the street, but before opening his door, he took a look of the things on the bag. He grabbed the instructions and read some of the parts, until he checked the drawings and his eyes went mental.

 

"Rae!" She opened the door, watching as Finn was heading upstairs. "I brought you these..." He stretch the plastic bag out, giving it to Rae. She hold it, taking a look and looking what there was inside. She smiled briefly, and closed the door.

Some sanitary towels and a few tampons in a small box. She grabbed the instructions paper and started to read, paying attention at the drawings and grabbing one of the tampons and breaking the package. Then, she glared at it, stripping herself from the bottom and, following the steps, she inserted the tampon in her vagina.

 

Finn came back to his room, forgetting that he had a history exam the next day. He laid in his bed, waiting for Rae to come outside. He was still thinking in those drawings and... Was Rae supposed to put those things inside of her? Was that hygienic? Did it hurt?

Minutes later, Rae was sitting on the couch of his room. She looked a bit uncomfortable and holding the plastic bag against her belly, as if someone could steal it from her. Finn told her she could leave everything in the bathroom, for another occasion if it'd be needed. She said it was fine. What she wasn't telling him was that she had already done that, the tampons and sanitary towels were in a cupboard. What she couldn't tell him was that she tried to insert two tampons inside of her and she failed, and there they were, with the rest of the plastic of the sanitary towel she had to use. No one told her how to use them, although everyone said they were really comfy to wear. What a total bollocks!


	7. Chapter 7

Rae didn't even remember where she left her bag because she was in her fourth glass of vodka lemon. Finn had been giving her more things to drink. Tonight was going to be epic. Chop had his place all for himself and he thought it would be an awesome idea to make a massive party. Summer was ending and he needed to celebrate the beginning of the classes with a special sexy party.

Rae danced with Archie all night. He was that pissed that he told her he thought he was gay. He wouldn't remember any of it next day, though. At first, Rae thought Archie fancied her because of the way he stared at her, but now she understood why. He liked her as more than a friend but less than a lover. And of course, she wasn't _his_ type.

Rae, who was now playing with the records against the record player, didn't hear Chop when he yelled at her. The speakers were too loud, but she didn't care because she was listening great music.

"Rae! Rae!" She turned around, smiling and giggling when she saw Chop.

"How you doing Mr. Choppy Chop?" She played with her index fingers against his chest, and he laughed at her.

"Spin the bottle baby girl!" He walked her around the house, going upstairs where a bunch of lads were making a circle in the middle of Chop's parents’ room.

When she arrived and saw those many boys, she tried not to laugh, although she couldn't resist.

"Am I gonna kiss all those boys? 'Because I'm the only girl in here." She sat beside Barnie, another friend of Chop's and started talking to him. He was a nice lad, she thought.

Chop laughed, leaving her in the room with the lads. She started a conversation about the type of music Barnie liked, and he answered he was into a new band called Oasis. They were a beginners, so it was cool stuff for starters. Rae told him she'd look for something about them and she'd tell him what she thought about the band. 5 minutes later and some girls came in, sitting between some of the best good-looking lads. _Sluts._.. was all Rae was thinking. Chop was the last one to arrive with an empty wine bottle, and then, he explained the rules of the game.

"No messing about, lads." He winked at some of his friends, laughing when they answered with another wink. "Kisses first. You all know how this game works. And theeeeen... some touching in the cupboard of lust for the luckiest ones. Uuuuuh..." He then grabbed the bottle in between his hands, spinning it around the circle of people.

Two people were kissing and Finn came in. He stayed in the door frame, looking for her and when he found her, he sat on her side. He smiled, giving her a wink and a glass of another vodka lemon.

"Did you kiss someone yet?" He whispered against her ear, touching her shoulder with his own.

"Not yet..."

Another couple was kissing when Chop decided to spin the bottle again, landing this time on Rae. Finn nudged her, tilting a smile. When the bottle was spanned again, it landed into a random boy she didn't know. He was pretty handsome and Rae started to shake. The rule was, the first one with the bottle landed, had to kiss the second one. She stood up quickly, staring at the boy while everybody in the circle was screaming for Rae to give him his kiss. She wasn't very confident with kissing, so when she approached him, she put her lips over his in a brief way. She pecked his lips quickly, and he kept her stand putting his hand on Rae's side. After a while, they moved away from one another and Rae came back to her spot on Finn's side.

"Good kiss, huh?"

She just shrugged. She was more aware of not falling to the floor because of her nervousness than giving the kiss to that boy. She grabbed her glass full of vodka and drank most of the liquid, staring at every couple in the middle of the circle. Finn did that too. They were both pissed. Rae made the theory that maybe by now, her blood turned into vodka. She could be possibly from the X-Men and she wouldn't know.

Then, Finn's turn came along. He had to kiss some blond girl. She recognised her. She was from her class. And of course, she was in love with him. Who wouldn't? Finn now was not Finn her best friend who used to play around in his underwear. Finn was Finn the handsome and fittest lad in school. And he played with underwear, but not in the same way as he used to.

Finn grabbed the girl by her arm, squeezing her forearm tightly and kissing her lips briefly. He didn't want to really make out with her in front of those bunch of dickheads he called friends (He didn't mean Chop or Archie. They were his true gang, obviously). He was interested in another girl. He has been for a while, now, although it was difficult to say. He's been friends with her and it was a bit of an issue to ask her out. He had the chance to kiss her here, to make her be his girlfriend tonight.

He wanted to stop the kiss, as everybody were staring at them two. That meant someone he didn't want to see him, was staring. Brienne, the girl who was kissing him, didn't want to break the kiss, so she put a hand over his neck, although he refused and broke it anyway. He sat down, watching that Brienne – the girl – was smiling at him. He didn't return it and sat again beside Rae. She looked at him from the corner of her eye, not saying anything. He didn't want to talk, either.

Brienne spanned the bottle again, landing on someone the couple didn't know. 10 minutes later, almost everybody in the circle had been kissed.

"Alright lads, one more kiss for the pleasure of everybody and the next couple will be going to the cupboard of lust..." Chop winked at a girl he'd been fancying for a couple of weeks. A blonde one.

Rae took her glass in between her hands, drinking a full amount of her drink. She almost finished it, while Finn was staring at her.

"Chill out, girl... There's more drink downstairs." He laughed at her, drinking some of his drink too.

"I'm just thirsty..." She shrugged. She landed her gaze at the middle of the circle, staring at the bottle that again was spanned again. She stared at everyone. Every girl. Every boy in the room. It was her last chance to kiss someone in case the bottle landed on her. After that, she was definitely going downstairs because she was not gonna go to the "cupboard of lust" with any of them. No bloody way. And as she predicted, the bottle landed on her. God wanted her to leave the room with another kiss on her lips.

What she didn't notice is that the bottle had landed on Finn before. While she was drinking. She was dead drunk. She waited for someone to spin the bottle again, but everybody had their eyes on her, and her partner on her side. She felt one of Finn's hands caressing her cheek and her friend leaned over her body. He moved his body to hers, putting his lips on her own sweetly while smiling against them. He sandwiched Rae's face in between his big and manly hands. He, then, opened his lips against hers, keeping her bottom lip in his mouth. He felt comfortable kissing her. It's not something he hadn't done in the past. They hadn't make out, but they had been kissing each other's lips for most years.

Rae had her eyes opened for a couple of seconds, not being conscious of the whole situation. She wasn't expecting kissing Finn tonight. Not with everybody staring at them, at least. She grabbed his t-shirt firmly, wanting him closer to her. Nonetheless, she was starting to feel sick. She drank so much alcohol and her stomach wasn't feeling right. She continued with the kiss, anyway. It was now or never, she thought. Since Finn hung out with his gang, they weren't as close as before. That meant no hugging, no kissing, no fun stuff between them. No laughing.

And the worst moment of her life arrived. 20 seconds of kissing Finn and his tongue was above hers, tasting her. He hadn't done that in the past. French kissing him was another thing. Another thing in this world. Finn was beyond this planet. He was perfection made meat. Those butterflies in her belly weren't normal. She felt weird feeling Finn playing with his tongue in her mouth. But those weren't butterflies. She instantly pulled Finn aside, standing up in the middle of the kiss and leaving the room as quick as she could. She opened the door of the bathroom and locked it. She knelt in front of the loo, throwing everything up. After two more minutes inside the small room, she cleaned her face, drying her face full of tears because of the puke and opened the door again, facing a surprised Finn. He didn't say anything, just left her there.

When Rae stood up, he went after her, forgetting about all the people in the room who were laughing at him. He saw how Rae locked herself in the bathroom and waited until she opened the door again, until he heard it. Rae vomiting. That's when he got it. Rae felt disgusted by him. They were friends. What was he thinking? A brief kiss was alright, but French-kissing her? They were like brother and sister. And she had felt sick about it. Then, she opened the door and he couldn't take it and left her there.

"Finn..."

But he left. He went downstairs and got another beer. Rae walked downstairs too, but went to the other corner of the house, not wanting to face Finn yet. That's when Archie appeared in front of her.

"Hey, what happened up there?" He laughed, offering her some of his beer. She took the can in her hand and drank a long sip.

"Shut up!" She laughed too. What was she supposed to say? She didn't even know what happened. Well, yes. She rejected the boy of her dreams aka her best friend too, because she felt sick. She needed a few more drinks to forget everything.

Rae left Archie there and went to the kitchen. She grabbed a red plastic glass from a plastic bag and put an ice cube inside. Archie went after her, staring at her movements around the kitchen while he was against the fridge. He let his eyes fall in Barney, not keeping too much attention to Rae. At the same time, Rae was looking for the vodka bottle. She sweared she had seen it from where she was before. When she found it, it was empty. So she grabbed another. A golden one. She put the liquid in the glass and later, the lemonade. It wasn't as good as vodka, although it was fine for just another drink. Then, she walked a few steps and stood beside Archie, looking where his eyes were staring. Barney.... Wait, Barney?

"Really?" She said quietly.

Archie wasn't paying too much attention to Rae's words until she hit him in his arm.

"What?"

"Really? Him?"

He shrugged, drinking some of his beer and finishing his can. He threw it inside a container bag and grabbed another from the fridge. Rae left his friend there and went to sit on the big sofa in the living room, drinking once more. It was the only thing that kept her from thinking about anything else. Drinking was fun. It made her feel good. It made her forget everything. Her home stuff, her friends, her esteem... everything. That's the only thing she did for the rest of the night, not like Finn.

Finn went to the back garden of the house after watching Rae. After grabbing another beer from the kitchen, he ignored every girl that crossed in front of him. He grabbed one of his cigarettes and burnt it. He sat on his own for a while, not expecting anyone to come over him. He drank most of his beer, feeling how it was turning hot and left the can outside, standing up and going to the record player. He changed the music and put something decent for his own standards. So that's what it felt like being rejected. By his own friend. His best mate, actually.

He drank some alcohol he found in tables around the house, chatting with people like Chop or some blokes of school. It was a party, wasn't it? So he was supposed to have a nice time and enjoy himself. And that's what he was going to do. He had a mission, and Rae was not gonna stop him. In any way.

He crossed the house, looking for the girl he wanted to meet that night. She was chatting with a boy. He knows him. Perfectly.

"Hey Barney, how you doing?" He stood on his side, staring at both of them.

"Hey you Nelson. Where did you put your arse? We thought you left." Barney pat his shoulder, drinking some of his drink.

"Nah. I was outside. Needed some fresh air..." He shrugged, finishing his new drink. He didn't even remember how many booze he had drunk. It was his... 7 glass? He felt good, still.

"Hey, Finn..." She said. He was waiting for this. And for Barney to let them be alone.

"Hi, Stacey..." He smiled, lightly blushing.

"Right, lovebirds. I'm leaving..."

Finally, Barney left them alone. It was their first time, so Finn had to take advantage of it. They have chatted at school, but about random stuff like homework, some friends and nothing else. Now he had the opportunity to have her all for himself at once.

"Don't listen to him... He's a bit of a dick." He laughed briefly, leaning his body on the wall. He drank his last sip of his drink, leaving the glass on the cupboard next to them.

"I wasn't..." She drank some of her drink, too, although keeping her smile on her face. "Not at least until you came..." She looked down, admiring the ugly floor.

Finn smiled more widely at her cuteness. He lowered his eyes, too, raising his gaze when she did. They stared for a while, leaning onto each other more and more.

"Are you having a nice time?" He spoke, staring at her blue eyes.

She shrugged her shoulders, stopping smiling and looking around. "It's not bad... I've been a bit bored, but I'm not anymore." She grabbed his hands in hers, driving him to the living room. "Fancy a dance?"

He doesn't dance, but for her, maybe he could try. Some shit song was played and it annoyed him quite a bit, but he didn't matter that much as long as he spent some time with her. She obliged him to put his hands on her hips, putting her own around his neck. Their bodies were closer, and so their faces. They danced at some of Michael Jackson's songs, not keeping an eye of what happened around them. Some people were staring at him, without discretion.

Finn, for once, tried and leaned once again his face against her. She seemed to go for a kiss too, though she refused.

"What are you doing?" She furrowed one of her eyebrows, staring at him as if he was mad.

"I thought it was obvious..." He stopped touching her, grabbing one hand with his other one.

"Are you joking, right?" He stood still quiet. Joking? It wasn't that bad, kissing someone in the middle of a party. "After kissing that fat girl?" She laughed at him, and Rae's too.

"What's the problem about it?" He furrowed now his eyebrows, uglying his face in a pretty way. He crossed his arms, waiting for an answer.

"It feels disgusting. Doesn't it disgust you? I'm sure I could gain some weight just by looking at her. And her ugliness... that's beyond science experiments." She laughed loudly, checking everybody's looks. But she laughed even more when she saw her. Rae.

She was there. Stupefied.

"What are you saying?" Finn asked again. He didn't know Rae was still there, behind him.

"I really wanted us to have a good time, Finn. If only you didn't kiss her... It was repulsive, upstairs..." Her friends appeared, staying on her side while the conversation kept going on.

"What the fu...?"

"Let her. She's right anyway." Said a big Rae that felt herself being smaller and smaller at every second.

"Rae..." He turned around, staring at his best friend’s face. She looked devastated.

She left the living room, picking her things of Chop's room and going outside. Why hiding what it really was? Finn kissing her had been disgusting. He was obviously disgusted by it. Just thinking about it made her puke again.

Finn went after her, not before telling Stacey he planned on having fun with her, although the only one that was being repulsive was herself for saying such things to people she didn't know. He loved Rae. She was an amazing person and she was pretty too. Why people wanted to hurt her? He was always the one defending her of every dickhead it crossed in her way. _Bunch of knob heads_ , he thought. He grabbed his jacket and went after her. She wasn't far away from Chop's home. She was just on the other side of the street, on a bench in the middle of the pavement. He sat down beside her, putting his jacket around her shoulders as she wasn't wearing any jacket at all.

"Hi..."

She raised her gaze, although she immediately looked down again. She didn't want to face him again. Not tonight, at least. Finn waited for an answer. For a gaze. For anything.

"I'm sorry..."

But she didn't answer again. She just shrugged. Finn accommodated himself on the bench, licking his lips and not stopping the tempting idea of biting his nails. When he was nervous or angry or anxious, he used to bit the skin around his fingers.

"Don't do that... You'll get hurt." She said, smoothly. She raised her eyes and caught his hand in between hers, giving him a warm smile. Then, she stood quiet again for two more minutes. "You shouldn't be 'ere..."

Finn stared at her, furrowing his eyebrows once more that night. He let escape a quiet _Why?_ Through his lips.

"She's right..."

"About...?"

"Everything."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that... that you should be disgusted about before. You shouldn't have kissed me. It felt disgusted. It was repulsive..." She grabbed his jacket, covering herself more as the cold wind in the middle of February was killing her.

"You don't mean that..." Finn turned his body towards her. It was the first time they discussed about stuff like that. About things they should and shouldn't do. "Is it because we're friends? Because we've been since we were little?"

"It's not that..."

"Then, what is it?"

"Don't you have eyes, Finn? Stacey has clearly seen myself. And I did, too. Long ago. It feels wrong being me."

"You say that because you're drunk." He swallowed his own saliva, sandwiching one of her hands in between his two, caressing the palm with his fingertips.

"I'm not as pretty as Stacey. It's an obvious thing you prefer snogging her instead of me..." She put her hands on her lap, not wanting to touch Finn in case he turned into a monster.

"It was you who I snogged tonight, not her. Weren't you?" He winked at her, making her smile for the first time since they came outside to the road. "You're as pretty as anyone else. Even more, I would say. And I mean that."

She laughed again, now staring at his face. She was so lucky to have him as a friend. He took care of her the most. More than her mum, she'd say. He was always there, when she needed someone to talk to. As she was too, when he needed someone there... They had always been friends, and they will always be. No matter what. Even if she turns into the ugliest woman on Earth and he becomes the hottest lad in the universe. Their friendship would never change.

"You're beautiful, Rae. Don't let people change that..." He stood up, handing her one of his hands while he grabbed a cigarette of his jeans pocket. "C'mon. I'll walk you home." He entwined his fingers around hers, smiling more widely at her when she smiled back at him and nodded.


	8. Chapter 8

“I can’t believe we’re here!” Rae said while she turned to him.

They’d been almost 7 hours there, waiting for the doors to be opened and be able to finally see The Cure live. Seven hours in pure agony, feeling the sun hitting their faces. They hadn’t brought sun cream because it was an improvised thing. Well, not for Finn. He wanted to give Rae his birthday present because it would be _really_ difficult to give it to her on her day. He spoke to Linda about her staying at his place that night. They’d play games and watch some films. What she didn’t know was that Gary wasn’t home that weekend, and Finn was gonna take Rae to Lincoln so they could enjoy a night together hearing The Cure playing in front of them.

This was their first concert. It’s true they’d gone to a few in Stamford, although it was not the same. They were free there. They could do whatever they wanted, and no one would judge them.

“It was hard to convince your mum, but it’s been worth it.” He stared at her with a small smile in his face.

She hugged him for the seventeenth time that day. When he told her where they were going, she couldn’t believe it. She had thought the tickets were sold out, but Finn won two on the radio two weeks ago and he didn’t tell her. Now, she was keeping that big smile on her face that made her the prettiest girl in the queue.

“Hey mate! Want some make-up?” Finn turned around and stared at that lad on his side. He kept quiet because he didn’t know what to answer to that. “Do you want some?”

“For wha’?” He furrowed his eyebrows, taking a glimpse of the black eye shadow in the lad’s hands.

“We’re from the official fan club. We’ve brought make-up with us so people can look like them while being in there.” The boy pointed at the stadium and showed Rae the black eye shadow. “You want?”

Rae nodded, giving him her best smile and making herself more room between the older boy and Finn. He started brushing her eyes carefully and when he was done, another boy showed her a bottle of hairspray. She nodded again and the lad started to put some on her hair while he backcombed it. It was a weird feeling for her, but she was enjoying it.

“You have to try, Finn!” She tells him.

Then, he, as a puppy, followed her orders and let the boys put make-up on him and tease his hair. He would need a long shower when he got home to put every hair in its place. That was bloody dry. Now, both of them looked like they were going to a KISS concert.

They were getting a bit bored, although they had done a few friends in the queue. That was not enough to keep them busy. And the heat was no better. Finn had gone to buy their third bottle of water when Melinda turned around and spoke to Rae.

“What a date, huh?” She let a smile shine in her face, staring at Rae’s eyes while checking the way Finn had taken minutes ago at the same time.

“What d’you mean?” Rae made herself comfortable on the floor, putting her hands on her back to keep her stand.

“Your boyfriend seemed excited to bring you here, I heard…” She giggled, hitting Rae’s arm with her elbow.

“Boyfriend?”

“Yeah…”

“Finn and me?” Rae gestured herself and the invisible Finn on her side and denied it with her face. “We’re just friends…”

“You sure?”

Rae furrowed her eyebrows, avoiding her eyes and hoping for Finn to come back soon. Melinda turned around again, speaking for a few minutes with her mates and forgetting Rae’s conversation.

Rae was still there, thinking about it. She had thought a few times, but didn’t give much credit. She liked Finn. But in a friendly way. It’s true they’re growing up and she’s conscious that her feelings for him could change anytime soon, or maybe not. Maybe her feelings were going to be wrong and they would give her the wrong idea about everything. Finn didn’t think about her like that, did he? They kissed. She remembered the party perfectly. Maybe he liked her and she didn’t realise it until now, thanks to Melinda.

Nah.

Rae knew it was impossible. She knew that, in fact. Finn was in love with someone else, or that’s what he told her three weeks ago. What she didn’t think was _who._ Stacey. Stacey bloody Stringfellow. Why? She’s mean. Everybody heard what she said at the party. Why would he like her? Maybe… Maybe it’s because she’s prettier than her. She’s blonde, and Rae’s brunette. Lads like blondes. And Rae doesn’t have the body of a Spice Girl too. She’s… a blob with a gob. At her fourteens’ and she was thinking like that.

She didn’t realise Melinda was again speaking to her.

“You like him, don’t you?”

Her first reaction was taking a glimpse if Finn was around. He wasn’t. Then, she let her eyes fall in her new friend’s face.

“No…”

She denied again.

“Why are you lying to me? I don’t know you. I wouldn’t win anything by lying to you…”

Then, she thought about it. It was true. She was not Chloe that she could grass about her feelings or her thoughts. She wouldn’t come to Lincolnshire and tell every neighbour of her what was in her head.

“So…”

“I don’t. And if I did, I wouldn’t have a chance anyway. He likes someone else…” She shrugged, putting her sun glasses on to make the conversation end.

“It’s not what it looks like…”

Another silence above the screams and singing from the fans around them. Just thirty more minutes and the gates would be opened.

“What?”

Melinda patted Rae on her back and guided her eyes over Rae’s shoulder. She smiled fondly and then, her gaze came back to Rae’s face. Afterwards, she turned around without saying anything else.

“10 pounds for a bloody water and two Cokes. Do they think I’m rich or something?” Finn said sitting on Rae’s side. “Want some?” He left the bottle of water in between them, handing her the red can and opening his own, taking a long sip.

No conversation with Melinda for the rest of the afternoon (and night). Finn didn’t talk too much either. He was always quiet. Rae didn’t really matter, and because the moment of the opening was finally coming, her belly was starting to feel the butterflies fooling around.

“Finn…”

“Hm?”

“Thank you.” She said in a low voice.

He just smiled and took her hand and sandwiched it in his own, squeezing it a couple of times before standing up. He helped her and grabbed her bag and put it in his back. The doors were opened now and they had to get their tickets and run as fast as they could. The queue was shorter and shorter for both sides of the stadium.

“Hold tight my hand, alright?” Finn squeezed Rae’s hand again and gave the security guard their tickets. “Don’t get loose!” Finn told her before running with their hands taken.

Rae seemed the owner of dog who wanted to be unleashed. And they were not the only ones. Hundreds of people were around them, screaming and running and jumping and trying to stop them so they could get a better place in front of the stage. But Finn didn’t let them do it. He held Rae as hard as he could, and he wanted a good place in front of Robert Smith. The legendary.

“C’MON RAE!” He screamed, although she couldn’t hear him well. An older woman was on her side, screaming and hitting her on the arm.

Rae kept running until Finn stopped behind a group of lads that were on the first line. It was a matter of time that he could get those places, because the ones that are always on the beginning are the first ones to go out because of the heat of the people around them. And he and Rae could enjoy a _The Cure_ concert happily.

“Are you okay?” He said when she stopped on his side. He smiled briefly at her, breathing deeply because of the race.

“Yeah…” She took a deep breathe, closing her eyes for a few seconds and relax herself. Some girls were hitting her back because the room was now full of fans.

Then, when she opened her eyes, she took the chance and looked around. Every corner of the big room was surrounded by people. Of any kind of ages. She had on her side an old man that he might be on his fifties. The grandstands had every place occupied. And there she was, with her best friend and an amazing band on the other side of the stage.

The opening song Open started to sound all over the place, although there was no one on the stage. Rae looked Finn from the corner of the eye when the black fabric that was hiding what the stage had on the other side, fell down. Screams from fans (and Rae and Finn’s too) resounded through the big concert room. More songs were followed by Open, like From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea or Wendy Time. The middle of the concert was full of old songs from other albums. Some of them were never been heard from Finn nor Rae, although they kept jumping and faking the lyrics according to still have fun and interact with the band and the rest of the fans. Just Like Heaven, One More Time, Lullaby, Lovesong…

The end of the show was coming. The Cure sang _to Wish Impossible Things_ while Rae couldn’t take her eyes off Finn. He looked beautiful that night. He really wanted to come and have fun. All he did was spending a lovely night being drunk and singing until he broke his vocal cords. He let the fans put make-up on him, he drank three beer cans with the heat of the sun and without moving anywhere. Rae could say he was really pissed at the moment, and that would be a problem when they’d have to come back to Stamford that night. But she wasn’t exactly thinking about that right now. He was her friend. Her best friend. And she… What was she?

She didn’t see that Finn was staring at her with a wide smile on his face. He hadn’t his eyes fully opened but because of the amount of fumes. He was still jumping, and Rae did the same. The last song was being played and both of them knew they only had that chance to see The Cure playing in front of them. Now, the last part of End was being played and they stopped jumping. Rae looked at Finn, guiding her eyes to a whistle he had around his neck. She instantly grabbed it and put it in her mouth, making a raucous sound.

“Where did you get that from?” She screamed to Finn, not realizing how close he was of her.

“A fan gave it to me before!” He lowered his gaze, stopping on her hands holding tight the whistle. He took two short steps to be closer to her, feeling himself more comfortable.

Finn put his hand on her hip, going up until he could touch her forearm. He let his hand rest for a brief seconds and then, he caught a piece of string in between his fingers. He got closer to his friend, touching her forehead with his own and he stared lengthily at her.

“Encore! Encore! Encore!” The concert was now finished, although the band didn’t sing some of their most famous songs. The concert was short, and the fans wanted more, obviously. That was not enough for them.

Finn licked his lips with the tip of his tongue, making sure Rae was watching. He didn’t do it on purpose, did he? They stepped closer to one another, keeping their faces together inch by inch. Rae landed her hands on top of Finn’s hair, caressing it with her fingers. Then, Finn stretched the rope out with two of his fingers, leaning for a kiss when the instruments started to play again. 

They parted abruptly, taking a glimpse at the stage and sang as loud as they possibly could. They had lost their voices in the middle of the concert. Now, they just moved their lips.

“I don’t care if Monday’s blue, Tuesday’s grey and Wednesday too… Thursday I don’t care about you, it’s Friday I’m in love...” The couple kept singing for the last five minutes, forgetting about what it was going to happen and enjoyed the rest of the night, making that night one of their bests.


	9. Chapter 9

Another boring day at college and it was only 10 in the morning. 4 more classes until she could come back home and lay in her bed without doing anything. She yawned for the fifth time that morning, keeping her eyes fixed on Mrs. Lewis, who was reading a review of the last book she read that month. English was her favourite class, although she didn’t enjoy the last classes because the books they were studying, she didn’t like them enough.

“I’d like you to read it. If you’re interested in psychology, you should check some of Freud’s books.” Mrs. Lewis kept saying for the next long minutes.

That was one of those days that Rae’s ovaries wanted to war with each other. Her back hurt and her face was a mix between an “I don’t give a fuck about anything” and a “Touch me and I’ll break into a million pieces”. The first mega period had come to kill her. The worst thing was that she was feeling in her insides how The Shining blood scene was happening in between her legs. Her lady bits had transformed into a slaughterhouse that were killing her insides slowly and painfully.

She bent down, opening the zip of her bag and grabbing Sandra, her best friend is those days of the month, and put it inside one of her jacket pockets quickly. The best part about sitting on the corner is that people couldn’t pay attention to you. Much better in those situations. She didn’t want people could have another reason to make laugh of her. No way.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, raising her hand and waiting for the teacher to let her speak.

“Could I go to the toilet, Mrs. Lewis?” She asked with a faked smile.

And as always, teachers don’t do their job and let their students go to the bathroom. She was sure some veins had broken inside her vagina, because she felt completely wet.

“It’s… It’s an emergency.” She pled.

Mrs. Lewis told her she could abandon the class, although that was going to be the last time she asked for the toilet. The clock on top of the blackboard pointed at the number ten. Just ten minutes until Mrs. Lewis class finished, but Rae’s necessities were more important than some random and bored English class. She was the second in her class, so what’s the matter if she loses 10 minutes of it? That won’t make her fail at the end of the term.

She stood up and left. The corridor had a few people walking, looking for their stuff in their lockers… She had to cross it until she could be in the ladies bathroom. When she arrived, she had to wait until the cleaning lady let her come in. She jogged the few meters left and started unbuttoning her jeans. She closed the door and sat on the toilet. She took a glimpse at the state her jeans were. Her knickers were full of blood and her jeans were no better.

“No no no no…” She checked the other side of the trousers in case they were stained with red colour. For Rae’s luck, they looked fine. No blood in her blue jeans.

She cleaned herself consciously, opening the plastic paper that covered the sanitary towel and put it over her underwear, making it comfortable. It was the last Sandra she had in her bag, so her body had to make her the favour to behave well.

Suddenly, the main door of the room was being opened. Some girls came in, talking about boys. Like always. It seemed some lads were playing footie on the field that weekend, and those girls were gonna go and see the fit boys.

“And Finn? He’s cute… He has become in a cute butterfly.”

“I saw him shirtless two days ago in P.E… Gosh…”

“I’m gonna ask him out.”

“What? How?”

“I dunno. He doesn’t have a girlfriend, and Stacey doesn’t seem to want to go out with him, so…”

“So…”

“It’s probably gonna happen… If you know what I mean…”

The girls giggled together. Rae, inside the loo, grabbed her things and put everything on the bin. She zipped her jeans over her hips and opened the door, going to clean her hands on the sink. Rae didn’t let herself see those girls’ faces, but she was dead sure their faces told it all.

She left the bathroom to go back to her class. The bell had rung two minutes ago, and she had to cross the entire flat to her next class.

 

She brought the ending of the pen to her lips, beating it with her tooth. Another boring class with Mr. Bolton. She closed her eyes and let herself day dream for a while. She wasn’t going to fail biology neither. She wasn’t paying attention at all when someone hit the glass of the window. She raised her gaze and saw a messy blond fringe and a pair of dark brown eyes, surrounded by multiple freckles. He stood there in his tiptoes, smiling at her. He slipped his tongue in between his lips and made a fool of himself. She laughed quietly; waving her hand and making him leave.

“Knobhead…” She said to herself, keeping an eye on him while he kept running to the field where his teacher was.

 

Rae grabbed her bag and put her pencil case and her notebook inside of it, walking towards the door as the lunch time had begun. She went to the canteen and chose what she wanted to eat that day. It wasn’t much. Some pasta and a couple of pork chops. She went and sat on her habitual seat at the end of the big room full of teenagers and started eating.

“I brought you something else.” Said a high-pitched voice on her back.

Stacey and her gang were all behind her.

“You sure you’re not gonna be hungry with just that?” asked Stacey again.

“I’m fine.” Rae said, trying to avoid the girls.

“Sure…” Stacey grabbed the chair in front of Rae, while the rest of girls sat in a way that kept Rae circled.

Stacey grabbed some of her food and threw it into Rae’s plate.

“What are you doing?” Said Rae whilst staring at Stacey.

She blonde one shrugged, eating her green apple.

“I’m not hungry.”

“So?”

“Well, you need to be fed properly, you know…” Stacey took a glimpse of Rae’s body, making it obvious with a gesture of her hand.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m sure you’re hungry.”

“I don’t want your food.”

“Why not?” Stacey crossed her arms under her breast, licking her lips without avoiding the other’s gaze.

Rae went to grab her things and stand up to go somewhere else to eat without company, but Amy put her arms over Rae’s shoulders, making her impossible to stand up.

“Where are you going?”

“We’re having a chat, Rae. Don’t be rude…” Stacey winked an eye to her, giving another one to her own friend for making Rae stay in the chair.

“I don’t want to have a chat. I want to eat my meal and leave.”

Rae played with the food on the plate, leaving the peas on one side and the brown sausage on the other side. Why couldn’t be alone for just once? They had been doing that for the whole week. And Rae was especially not in the mood for all of their shit.

“Why are you doing this, Stacey?”

“Do what?”

“You’ve been annoying me all week. What do you want?”

“Nothing…”

That’s when all her gang laughed. Rae didn’t find any of it funny. It really wasn’t. It was tiring, actually. That gang was following her everywhere. She wasn’t stupid. She saw them in every corner on the corridor when she had to go to every class, in the chippy… she saw them once in front of her own place.

“I just wanna know why Finn is so interested in a fat cow like you.”

Rae bit her bottom lip, wanting to stand up and leave the big canteen. That or the other option was punching Stacey’s face, something her mum wouldn’t approve. So she stood quiet.

“Tell me… I’m really interested.”

Another long minute being quiet, so Stacey took the chance to act. She grabbed Rae’s glass of water and spilled all the water in all of her food.

“Are you gonna answer me now?” She said with a fake smile. A fake smile that Rae would be glad to hit happily.

Rae’s face went from a pinky tone to turning into a white ice cube.

“Maybe he’s not interested in a slag like you.” She thought for an instant. If she were about to say that, that thing with water would be nothing comparing it to what Stacey would be doing with her afterwards. “I’m his friend.”

“Yes, we all know that. It’s just… I don’t get why he wants to be friends with you. You’re neither pretty nor handsome…” She made that face she always do when something was obvious in her eyes. “What are you good at, Rae?”

Rae stopped looking at her and started looking for someone who knew her. Chloe should be somewhere with Izzy. And she was supposed to meet Finn for lunch. Where the fuck was him?

“Oh, don’t tell me. I know what you’re good at. People say fat people give the best blowjobs. Is that it? Is it, right?” She put her elbow on top of the table, letting her chin rest against her hand.

All her gang laughed again, pointing at Rae’s face not looking at them.

“Why aren’t you laughing? Don’t you think Stacey is funny?” Amy spoke again. What’s her problem? She’s always defending Stacey from people or what?

“Let her, Amy… Whom remains in silent, concedes _._ ”

Rae couldn’t stand anymore words from her and did what she wanted to do for the last past week. She grabbed Stacey’s glass of water and threw it all to her face. She instantly let out a scream, warning all the people about what was happening with the girls.

“Rae, what’s going on?”

She turned around, watching a Finn holding a tray with his food. He was there, staring at the girls, especially Stacey that now was covered in water. All her clothes let her lingerie obvious.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!!!???” Stacey screamed again, standing up from her chair and going after Rae. She stood there, not knowing what to do. Her eyes were fixed on Finn’s face, which was clearly fixed on Stacey’s top. And he wasn’t really looking at the colour of it.

She, tired of every stare and Stacey, left the big room and ran until she was outside. She sat on one of those wood tables, staring at every student that passed in front of her.

“Rae?”

Finn sat in front of her, letting the tray on the table. He smiled briefly at her, and made a gesture with his hand, indicating the canteen.

“What was that?”

“Nothing…”

He furrowed his eyebrows, grabbing the fork and knife and cutting his hamburger in a half and eating it in one bite. She looks at his plate, full of food. Food that she didn’t eat yet.

“Where is your food?”

“Hm?”

“Your food…” He said, raising his gaze to look at her, waiting for an answer.

“Wasn’t hungry…”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah…”

“So that doesn’t have anything to do with that tray full of water in the canteen, right? You’re just… not hungry…”

“That’s what I said.” Rae grabbed her bag, opening it and taking one of her bag of crisps she always had just in case.

Finn kept an eye on Rae, following every move she did. She was always banging about something, not like today. Not that week. She was… quieter. He finished his hamburger and grabbed his Apple, handling it to Rae. She, who was looking at some lads on the other side of the football pitch, turned her gaze to Finn again.

“Here…”

She took the apple in between her hands, holding it.

“Eat it.”

“I said I wasn’t hungry…”

“Eat it.” He ordered.

“No.”

“I know that tray full of water was yours.” He whispered, knowing Rae would be mad with him in a matter of seconds.

“Can we talk about anything else?”

“You can talk to me about what happened in there. Wanna try?” He said in a smooth voice. He always did that in a way to keep Rae relaxed.

“Nothing to explain, really…”

“Whatever. If you don’t want to tell me what’s going on, fine. But eat that bloody Apple!”

“I don’t want to.”

“I wasn’t asking, Rae.” He stood up, grabbing his tray with both hands and making a hard noise when he hit it against the wood table. “Do you think I’m stupid? That I don’t know what you’re doing?”

She stared at him from her seat, feeling Finn quite intimidating with that tone she wasn’t used to hear from him.

“You’ve not been eating properly for the past days. What’s wrong with you?” She stood there in silence. She didn’t even notice what she was doing. It’s true she didn’t eat enough the last couple of weeks, but it was fine. She wasn’t _that_ hungry to eat. “I’m gonna go and throw this and, when I come back, I want you to eat it. Is that clear?”

Finn left without saying anything else. He did that regularly. Behaving like an older brother. That’s what he was. A friend who was treated like a brother. She, then, ate her apple in silence, staring at Finn’s things. He left his bag mid-opened, with a maths book inside. She grabbed the end of the fabric and opened the zipper widely.

“What are you doing?”

“Fuck…”

Rae rolled her eyes, leaving the book inside the bag and staring again at Stacey.

“What now?”

“What now? Do you know what you did to me before? Fucking bitch…” Stacey hit her shoulder hard with her hand. Rae let the apple fall to the floor because of the force of the hitting and stared at her without saying anything. Her eyes fell to the floor, where the apple that Finn gave her before was.

Stacey took a glimpse of Finn’s bag on top of the table and smiled.

“Now your boyfriend is not around to defend you…”

“He’s not my boyfriend…”

“It would be weird if he was…”

That’s when Stacey hit her. In her face.

Rae stood there, blinking repeatedly and putting one of her hands on her cheek instantly.

“That’s the last time you throw me water. Understood?”

Stacey, who kept stalking her for no reason for weeks. Who kept insulting her everywhere, in public or private places without caring people could be staring. Who humiliated her in front of the entire school? She was trying to look as if she was innocent? As if it wasn’t her fault?

“Fat cow… What do you think you are? Do you think you’re better than us because Finn is your friend? Because he’s not. He’s obviously taking advantage of you. You must give him something he likes… That thing with blowjobs must be true…”

“She must shallow if he’s that interested…” Vicky said from behind. All the gang laughed after her.

“Oh, that should be it. Does his cum taste good, Rae? Is that it? That’s the only thing he’d be interested in you. I don’t even know how you turn him on… How you put him on tune?”

“We’re making you a question.” Amy’s voice suddenly rose. And Rae didn’t answer anyway.

“Nah, let her. I’m wrong. It would be impossible for Finn to like her. What would he like about her? She’s full of fat… disgusting…”

“More cushion for the pushing…” Vicky said, winking at her group of friend.

Rae stood up, grabbing her things and running to the opposite side of the flat. Where no one could find her, where the bad lads went for a spliff. She sit down on the floor, blinking forcefully her eyelashes, not wanting to cry on school and put her hands under her belly, feeling the cramps coming from her ovaries. It should be a perfect day but her period and Stacey’s gang always made her day better. Because she couldn’t have better days. And she was still hungry. Finn was gonna be mad at her. And he’d let her alone, and he wouldn’t want to be her friend anymore because she couldn’t trust him with her own stuff. He’d tell her they couldn’t be friends anymore and he’d go with Stacey. Because he still liked Stacey. That bloody slut…

And that’s when she cried. Alone.

 

He came back from the canteen, looking for Rae in a place where she wasn’t. Three wood tables and no one around. His things were still there, intact. He went and grabbed his bag, putting it over one of his shoulders and saw the apple on the floor. He furrowed his eyes and seethed himself. He took it from the floor and held it, walking the entire place and trying to find his friend. Her things were nowhere, so he supposed he was hiding from him because of what he said before.

He asked the gang, some friends of his own class until some lads he didn’t know told him they saw her going to the back of the flat, where the football pitch was. He thanked them for the information. He was getting mad at that time. He didn’t want to be rude with her, but there was stuff she wasn’t telling him. And that made him want to kill her. He was her friend, and she knew she could tell him stuff.

When he turned around the corner, he saw her. She was sitting on the floor, with her bag in between her legs.

“WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN, RAE?” He threw the apple in front of her and waited for her response. One that wouldn’t leave her lips. “Did you hear me or are you deaf?”

“No…” She whispered.

“No?” He repeated while he sat by her side, looking at her from the corner of her eye. She wasn’t giving a look back.

“I’m not deaf…” She spoke again, lower.

“What are you doing here, Rae?” No answer from Rae. Two minutes had passed, and neither of them wanted to talk. “Rae…”

Finn hated quiet Rae. She was always making jokes and trying to be funny and keeping a smile on her face, making him smile too.

“Rae… I’m sorry…”

She denied with a groan, not turning her face to him.

“I should give you an apology. I’m sorry about what happened before… I know I’m no one to tell you those things. It’s just… You’ve been different these past days… And I know you’ve not been eating properly. I want you to be okay… That’s all. I’m sorry for yelling at you, you know. It wasn’t right…”

Rae cried in silence again, letting her tears fall from her face to the floor. Her sobs were louder now, and Finn could hear them.

“Oh, c’mon… I wasn’t that bad…” Finn laughed, trying to make Rae laugh with him. What he accomplished was making Rae cry louder. “Hey…”

He went for a hug until Rae refused to give him any body contact.

“What’s wrong…?” He asked, worried about his friend.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t start with that…”

“I’m just having a bad day, okay?” She went to stand up, grabbing her bag and putting it on her bag. She had the intention to let Finn there alone. She wasn’t in the mood for anything. Her period was killing her, she was in need of sanitary towels, the queen of the Stamford brothel had hit her in the face and she didn’t eat anything. Bad day?

“Hey, where are you going?” Finn stood up at the same time as Rae. He grabbed her by her hand, stretching her arm out, pulling her into him. “Why are you crying, Rae?”

He held her against the wall of the school, cleaning her face full of tears with his thumbs.

“What’s wrong, Rae? You know you can tell me…” He whispered whilst finishing cleaning her face.

“I’ve not been eating…” She confessed.

“I know that…”

“It’s not what you think…” She said, finally staring at him in the eye. She cleaned herself with the end of her jumper and holding her tears inside her eyes. “She didn’t let me…”

“What? Who didn’t let you?”

“Stacey…”

“What did she do to you?”

She instantly turned her gaze to the apple that was on the floor.

“I’m sorry…”

“Has she… Has she done something to you?”

She denied, landing her eyes to the floor. After a few seconds, she returned her eyes to him.

“Why do you like her, Finn? Why her?”

He didn’t say anything. Instead, he stood there, waiting for anything to happen. He seemed mad with her with the face he had. Rae noticed how he swallowed and couldn’t avoid his lips. Something she really loved. She started having feelings for his lips and then, all of him. Not all at once. His lips were not from this world.

“Will you tell me if something’s wrong again?” With the hand he kept against her cheek, he caressed carefully her skin with her fingertip. He always did that to make her feel better.

She nodded, smiling briefly at him. He smiled back, more widely than her.

“Let’s get some chips, yeah?” He winked at her, and she followed him when he started walking through the high school area, knowing they were gonna skip their last classes.


	10. Chapter 10

Rae furrowed her eyebrows when her teacher announcer they were gonna welcome a doctor to the class. _What the fuck?_ She thought. She started writing random stuff in a piece of paper, not caring of anything else as she was thinking of her plans for the weekend. The gang was gonna meet at the pub to celebrate Rae’s birthday. She was happy for that. She didn’t have friends like them since… well, never. She had always been with Finn, though. Apparently, Finn met a lad called Chop in his football team and now, they had become friends. Archie was there too, but she already knew him. They were friends since they were like 5.

It’s fun how the gang formed itself. Finn introduced Chop to the gang when it was just formed by Rae, Archie and Finn. Chop and Izzy were an item for a couple of months, and then, Chloe came afterwards. And now, after almost a year together they were gonna celebrate her birthday. But that wasn’t the point of this story.

“Could you pay attention, please?”

The class was a total mess. After the break, everybody wants to do their thing and go home peacefully.

“Mason, sit down and listen!” Screamed the Science teacher.

She was dead scary when she was angry. If they didn’t do what she said, it was a fact they were gonna have a lot of homework to do that afternoon. When every student was paying attention to her, she introduced the doctor.

“He’s handsome…” Said Chloe biting her lips. “Isn’t he, Rae?” She gave her a small smile, staring at the young man in front of the class.

“Hello. My name is Dr. Kassar, but you can call me Nick.” Every girl in the class sighed when the doctor smiled widely at them while he proceed to introduce himself. “Did your teacher tell you why I’m here?” The whole class denied with a firm head gesture. “I’ve come here with another doctor and we’re gonna reunite the last two grades so we can have a proper chat. So please, let me guide you to a bigger class.” He answered with a smoothly voice. Again, the girls sighed and stood up and going after him.

“Why are you here, exactly?” Mason asked with a rude tone in his voice. As always.

“Don’t be rude Mason and follow the class.” The teacher said while grabbing the class keys in order to close the door. Rae stood up with Chloe and went with the girls to where the doctor was going.

The principal room for meetings was full of older students from the next course. There were Archie and Finn on a corner, so Rae went after them. Chloe, who was looking for Izzy, saw that she was on the front.

“I’m gonna go with Izzy, is that alright?” Chloe asked while staring at the ginger one, who was waving a hand at her.

“Yeah, no problem…” Rae, instead, walked to the opposite direction, where the boys were sat. “Alright, lads?” She smiled at them, making herself a room in Finn’s side.

“Hello Rae!”

“So… What’s this about?” Rae asked, staring at the two boys.

“They didn’t tell you?” Archie asked from behind Finn, furrowing his eyebrows.

“No…”

“Please, could you be quiet for a few minutes, guys?” Said one of the teachers in front of the class.

All the students turned their eyes to her, waiting for what it was going to be a long talk. The two teachers walked to the main door of the class and let the doctors stay there, alone with the savages.

“Hello. My name is Dr. Nick Kassar and this is my colleague Dr. Lauren Thompson. You’ve been informed we were gonna come to the school and give us a special class about sexual education.” After those two last words, all the class started to gossip with their classmates, whispering every kind of things about the subject. “This is a special class for all of you, and I hope we’re able to answer all your questions properly. As you’ve seen, your teachers are not here, so you can trust us with whatever you want to ask or know.”

At the same time, his doctor colleague was writing some things on the black blackboard on the wall. Things like _sexuality, safe sex, contraception, ways of having sex, periods, myths_ _…_ When she was done, she turned around, smiling at some girls in the front line and started her speech.

“Hello guys, you can call me Lauren. And if you don’t mind, I’m gonna start this session today. Do you mind?” The student kept quiet, making it obvious for the doctor to continue. “First of all, what do you know about sex?”

Some hands rose from different corners of the classroom.

“It’s fucking amazing!” Mason, as always, speaking more than the necessary. He was always trying to be the funnier, but his jokes weren’t.

“Right… What else?”

“It’s when a man and a woman make love, right?”

“It’s not necessary to be a man-woman thing. But it’s alright…”

“That we need to be safe?” Another random student asked to the doctor.

“What about STDs?” Lauren sat on top of the teacher’s desk, staring at every student in the room, waiting for the answer she was asking. One minute later, without no response from the younger people, she asked again. “Have you heard about the sexually transmitted diseases?” Some of them nodded. “Let’s make a list and see how many you know, alright?” She stood up and walked to the blackboard again, grabbing a white chalk to start writing.

“HIV…?” Chloe raised her voice over the rest of the students, hesitating.

“Good! AIDS is a very important one. What’s your name?” Lauren asked the 4 capital letters and stared at Chloe.

“I’m Chloe…”

“Do you know any other disease, Chloe?” But she didn’t answer.  “Anyone?” No answer, again. “Don’t worry. It’s alright if you don’t know this stuff. That’s why we’re here. Don’t we, Nick?”

“Exactly. We’re here to help you all.” Dr. Nick grabbed some papers from his bag, giving it to the student that was in front of him. “I’m gonna give you some pictures of the different diseases we can find if we’re talking about having unsafe sex. For example, gonorrhoea, genital herpes and syphilis are the most common ones. There are other ones, like chlamydia.” The first ones seeing the pictures didn’t look great, though. Some of them weren’t bad, but the rest… It was something real serious.

The pictures kept following the different students’ hands until they fell on Rae’s. She checked each one of them, making weird and disgusting grimaces in the process. Those diseases there not something to be fun of.

“No way I’m gonna get that…” She whispered to herself, although some of the students who were on the back heard her.

“No worries, Earl… No-one wants to sleep with you.” Loads of laughters followed afterwards.

Rae bit her lips, swearing to herself loads of no proper adjectives to describe those wankers.

“Listen… Why don’t you grab your tiny penis, your tiny testicles and piss off, Simmy?” A deep voice came from one of Rae’s side. She smiled at Finn, she always did. He was always there for her, even if she wasn’t paying attention. He was always keeping an eye on her.

Meanwhile, the doctors kept talking about their thing, trying to avoid any row with the students.

“Those diseases can be transmitted sexually. Even if you’re having straight or gay sex. It doesn’t matter. What it’s important is that you’re safe from them.”

“Also, there are other things in consideration when we’re having unsafe sex, and it’s something women are the most aware of, I suppose.”

“Pregnancy…” Lois, from the lower class, answered.

“That’s it.” Dr. Lauren pointed at her, giving her a brief smile. “When you’re having sex without protection, you’re not only exposed to different sexual diseases, but pregnancy is the most common thing that happens when we don’t use any sort of contraception. Especially at your age…”

“We’re not telling you; you can’t get pregnant, but it’s a thing you should know about. Having a baby is not taking care of an old baby doll. It’s a human being, so you have to make a decision if you want or don’t want to get pregnant.”

“Obviously, the most common contraception thing to prevent both pregnancy and sexual diseases is the condom. There are different types of contraception as condoms, for men and women; birth control, IUD, patches…” The Dr. grabbed some more papers and gave them to the students, one by one. “Here you have some information about contraception and pregnancy.”

That was one of the most awkward classes they’ve had in years. They didn’t expect to have a special class talking about sex and pregnancy and condoms. Rae looked at her friends from the corner of her eye, noticing how her cheeks were red at the time. Both doctors kept talking about different diseases, pregnancy and body problems during growing up like genitals, hair where it wasn’t supposed to be, hormones… even cumming. That was the thing. They were only fifteen. Most of them had been practising sex for a few months, and some other were about to. It was that age when your body wanted to feel, to experience…

“Before going to the last part of the session, I’d like to have a volunteer for a practise exercise we’re going to do in here. I don’t want to rush you, but it would be interesting if some of you want to do it.” Dr. Lauren grabbed from the bag, not papers, but a silicon penis. A white one. And she put it in one of the free tables. Then, Dr. Nick gave her from a big box some condoms and she put them beside the fake boy shaft. “Alright. I’d like to have some volunteers, please…”

The class was ecstatic, staring at that white thing that kept moving to different sides. The adults kept staring at them, waiting for any volunteer who wanted to help. Two lads offered to do it, just to make themselves the cool ones in front of the class. Guess what? One of them was Mason. The other one? Simmy.

“Anyone else? We’d like to, at least, teach one of each class. Girls are also included… Don’t be shy.”

No response from any girl, so the male doctor had to pick some more people to do the exercise. All the girls were at the front line, so it was easy to pick some of them. The chosen ones were a bit embarrassed, although it was going to be funny though. Then, he started to pick other boys from different lines, especially the last ones. People on the back of the class was quiet, watching every movement of what people was going at the front. Simmy was the first one putting the condom, and he did it wrong, so all the class started to laugh at him. Then, it was Mason’s turn. He didn’t do it properly, although Dr. Lauren gave him a couple of tips to make it easier and he passed the test.

The girls were funnier. They didn’t know what to do. Not even wrapping the plastic paper. So, all of them took it from the package and opened the condom. They all did it slowly, following the doctor’s instructions to make it perfect. The funniest thing was that girls did it better than boys. When they were done, Dr. Nick kept asking for someone else to do it.

“Don’t be shy… It’s just an exercise so you don’t have any problems when the time comes.” He fixed his eyes on Archie, who had said nothing in the past hour. The three of them were being quiet. Any conversation apart from the disgusting faces and moans when they saw the pictures before. “Would you like to try?”

Archie denied firmly with his head, reddening instantly. Then, Nick stared at Rae. She didn’t pay attention to all the condom thing because of the embarrassment she had of herself. She wasn’t the kind of girl doing those things, was she?

“What about you?”

Rae raised her eyes to the older man, who gave her a wide smile. She swallowed, trying to fit in her chair as better as possible. Finn stared at her, waiting for her to stand up but watching how pale she was getting. He stood up and followed the doctor, not keeping an eye on Rae anymore until he was in front of the class. When she heard what Finn was about to do, she followed him. She kept her eyes on his back. On his plaid.

He did it. He did put the condom in its right place, while every girl in the class was drooling over him. He, one of the fittest lads in school, putting a condom. Of course the girls would be drooling over him. Rae was. When he finished, he came back to his seat, not paying attention at all the girls’ gazes around him. He winked at her when he sat, giving her a simple smile. The one that he always gave her.

“Finally, we would like to talk about the different myths related to sex. There are a lot of them and we think we should speak about them. I’m sure you have many questions about it, so I encourage you to ask. We’ll answer as best as we possibly can.” Dr. Nick grabbed the chalk now, writing random words again in the blackboard. “Anyone?”

Some hands were raised by then, so loads of questions were answered in the last minutes of the class.

“Is it true that women can’t get pregnant is the boy… If he pulls out?” Lois, again, asked. She was a shy one, but interested in everything at the same time.

“That is obviously not true.” Dr. Lauren sat on one of the chairs in front of the girls and talked about pregnancy facts. “The thing is, boys still cum while they’re having sex. They don’t have to ejaculate inside of you for you to get pregnant. That’s why you have to be careful with your periods, girls. The same happens with STD. The only way to avoid them is using condoms. Birth control, patches… They don’t keep you safe form getting an STD. Remember that.”

“Is it true that two condoms is better than one?” Archie, for the first time since the talk started, spoke. He was a bit nervous and obviously embarrassed, but he did ask an important question.

“Of course it is, Archibald.”

“You serious, pal?”

Some of the lads laughed at his obvious question. Although he didn’t pay attention to all of their laughs.

“In fact, it’s not.” It was Dr. Nick’s turn. “Technically, you think that, if you put more than one, the sex will be safe. That’s a mistake.” He was supposed to speak to Archie, but he kept staring at the other lads. The ones who were wrong. “Wearing 2 condoms at once seems like a more effective way to prevent pregnancy but, in fact, it increases the chances. The layers rub against each other causing them to break. That doesn’t mean I’m saying you only have to keep just one on your pockets, boys. Better having more than one if you break them off instead of having no one left. ”

Izzy raised her hands, waiting for the doctor to give her the chance to ask.

“What’s your name?”

“I’m Izzy…” She spoke shyly. “I was wondering… Is it true that women can get pregnant if they… swallow?”

“Girls… Don’t worry. You won’t get pregnant. Never. If you’re into that, nothing to be ashamed of, believe me that you won’t. There’s no way your body will put the things that are on your stomach into your uterus. So, not. You can’t get pregnant.”

“The longer the better?” Macca, one of Simmy’s friends, spoke. _Why boys are always asking silly questions about their cocks? It_ _’_ _s not that important, is it?_ Rae thought for the millionth time.

And other question were asked in the last five minutes of the class like _Can you get pregnant if you have sex under the water? Is it true you can go blind if you masturbate? Will the hymen break if I have sex?_

Dr. Nick took the big box full of condoms and told the students to pick one up. It was an obligation. No student would leave without taking one.

“Now, go on. Pick a condom and make sure to use it.” He smiled at the girls, telling them there was no reason to be ashamed of having sex. It was natural. We were made for that.

Rae kept following the doctors and every student, leaving the classroom at the same time that they were grabbing condoms from the box. Rae’s turn came along, but Archie was faster and took one for himself. She hesitated, and quickly said no with a firmly gesture with her head.

“I don’t need them…”

“Why not?” The doctor handled her the box and she stared at the content. She shrugged. “You don’t have to be embarrassed, it’s alright. You don’t have to use it if you don’t want to, but it’s my job to tell you to take them, just in case.” He grabbed a condom and put it on Rae’s hands.

She closed it in between her hands and Finn grabbed one for him, putting it in his pocket and standing up. He waited for Rae to stand up and leave.

“You alright?” He asked whilst putting a hand over her shoulder.

She looked at him, giving him a reassure smile as he followed the fall of her arm and grabbed her hand, squeezing it in his.


	11. Chapter 11

“I’ve never had an orgasm.” Izzy furrowed her brows, staring at every one of them sitting around the table of the pub.

“It’s exactly the same as sneezing eight times.” Chop said, answering at Izzy’s statement.

“Is it bollocks!”

Finn, who was there listening with his mouth shut while preparing himself a cigarette, couldn’t avoid to rectify Chop’s thoughts about having an orgasm.

“It’s true. And when I come, I come with thunder, pal. Once you get him out, the SWAT team can’t get him back in.”

The whole gang laughed at Chop’s explanation. It wasn’t necessary to tell those details, but they were too pissed to care about what they should or should not say. People in the pub were keeping an eye on them, in case they disturbed the other clients.

It was Friday night. It was Rae’s birthday and they agreed on going to the chippy, eat something and then, heading together to the pub to finish the day with a couple of pints. The drink kept following one another. The table was full of empty glasses that, 10 minutes before, were full of beer or snakebite.

“Oh, aye?! What about the girls you’re doing it with?”

“Ask Sam Moffat, mate. I threw her round that Renault 5 like she was an empty shell suit.”

Finn couldn’t help himself and laugh listening to Chop. His sexual stories were always funny. He always had a laugh listening to them.

“Why d’you have to be such a horrible boy all the time?” Izzy, not understanding why Chop was always so open talking about his relationship, hit him in his arm.

“What you doin’? What you doin’?”

“Why? Why?” And then, Finn hit Chop too.

“Chill! Stop hitting me! It’s not nice.”

Finn couldn’t stop laughing, catching Izzy’s gaze a few times while his smile was still in his face. So was Archie’s, who followed happily the fight.

“Like, I’m not saying I’ve done everything.” That was Chloe’s turn to speak. She was always doing that. As if people were interested. She felt like a queen, that everybody had to think she had a degree about the thing.

“Yeah, cheeky!”

“But, you know, like, an orgasm’s like a gateway. You can never go back through. Like, it sets you free as a person. Doesn’t it?”

“Totally! Yeah”

“I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we all talk about our best sexual and romantic experiences?”

“Great! I’ll go first. Listen…”

“I’m gonna get some drinks, first.” Rae stood up, grabbing her empty glass and asked if any of them wanted another round. She paid for everything, obviously.

She left the table and walked to the bar, waiting for the bartender and ordering new drinks. She let herself fall in one of the chairs, when a hand stopped in her shoulder. She turned her eyes to that person and she saw her best friend.

“I’ll help you with the drinks.” Archie smiled at her, staying by her side. “How’s your birthday, having fun?”

“Definitely.” She raised her thumb up, returning the smile to him. “I just hope I’m not hungover tomorrow.” She talked again, finishing with a brief laughter.

“Don’t tell me…”

The bartender came to them, writing the number of drinks they wanted on a piece of paper for what it seemed like their bill and the couple waited there until a young woman gave them the drinks. They held them in their hands and when Rae turned around; the gang was holding a piece of cake and a candle in the middle.

“Happy birthday to you… happy birthday to you… happy birthday dear Raeeee…” Although the gang had agreed on singing her a song for her birthday, Chop couldn’t keep the promise to not shout Raemundo in the middle of the song. That made Rae laugh hard. “Happy birthday to yoouuuuu…”

She brought the drinks to the table, staring at each member of the gang and later, the small cake Chloe was holding in between her hands. She gave them a wide smile and blew the candle.

“Did you make a wish?”

_Did she?_

“Nope…” Rae said, biting her lips while faking a smile.

“Oh, shit…” Finn grabbed his lighter and with the help of his hand, he lighted the candle once again.

Rae thought about something she really wanted. She could ask for more CDs, or a record player for her vinyls. She was tired of going at Finn’s when she wanted to listen good stuff. She could wish for something she’s been wanting for a couple of months, but it was out of her reach.

She stared at Finn for a few seconds, forgetting about the candle until Izzy told her to blow it again. She came back to reality and blew it, hearing instantly all the gang screaming and laughing and wishing her a happy birthday.

“Did you make a wish, Rae?” Izzy asked sitting on her spot around the table.

“Yep…”

“What is it?”

“I’m not supposed to tell anyone… If I tell you, it won’t come true!”

Apart from not coming true, how could you tell your friends that the only thing you want in your life is the piece of meat you have beside you?

“So… What were we talking about?” Rae asked, avoiding the wish subject.

“Orgasms!” Chop hits the table. “That’d be my specialist subject on _Mastermind_.”

“Are we reeeeeally talking about that?” Archie asked from the corner of the table. It wasn’t his thing. Obviously, being gay and orgasms were something that shouldn’t go together in a gang conversation.

“Let’s have some fun Archie! Don’t be so boooring…” Rae drank half of her snakebite and black and laughed hard, pointing at the blonde one while the rest of the gang kept laughing too.

“So you’re in our team, aren’t ya Raemundo?” Chop smiled mischievously at Rae, raising his brows and making a weird dance with them.

“Me?” She pointed herself with her thumb. “No! Never…”

And it was true. She never did that. She didn’t even think about it. It was forbidden territory as a fat girl. No way she’s thinking about sexual things…

“You don’t hafta lie Raemundo…” He winked at her, but she denied.

“I’m not lying…”

“You should try and rub one, Rae.” _Excuse me, what was that? Chloe?_ She said, giggling and staring at everyone. “You won’t regret it!”

“What?”

“Soooo good, isn’t it? Finn? Archie?”

Both lads shrugged.

“Suppose so…” Finn grabbed another of his cigarettes and lighted one. “I think I’m gonna get another drink…” He stood up from his chair and asked if any of them wanted another round. Then, he grabbed 20p from his pocket and handed it to his friend. “Put something decent on.” He finally said, winking at her and leaving to the bar of the Swan.

Rae left her friends in their usual spot and went to the jukebox with a smile. She had plenty of snakebites tonight and she didn’t even know how the bloody hell she was gonna go home without falling down, or throwing up. She put the money inside the slot and clicked on the favourite buttons since last summer: 17. Song? _Rock n’ Roll Star. Oasis._

She came back to her chair and Finn was waiting for her with her drink in his hands. He started to move his head according to the music, following the rhythm with a wide smile on his face. He sometimes sang songs, especially when he was pissed. Tonight was one of those days. It was weird so see him that happy. He was turning into a grumpy sod, Rae thought.

“Izzy, make yourself useful and take a picture of the biggest pythons in sports entertainment.” Chop asked her with a demanding voice, all joking like.

“What, these ones here?” Finn stayed on Chop’s side, putting up his arm and showing them his bicep.

“The ones or those ones?” Chops asked once again to Izzy, making her to pick one of the lads. She broke into a big laugh while the girls stare at them, judging. Izzy grabbed the camera, pointing at her friends and taking a picture of their arms. Then, they joined the rest of the gang with a laugh.

“Let me have a go, Izzy.” Chloe grabs Izzy’s camera in between her hands and tells the gang to put themselves closer so she can take a new picture. “Ready?”

More pictures were taken that night. All of them for Rae. It was a night to remember. After two more pints, the gang left the place and go somewhere else. They all wanted to take pictures together and they couldn’t take any of them in The Swan.

Izzy asked to some random girls on the street to ' _Please, take a picture of them all'_. They hugged each other, laughing and screaming nonsense because of the amount of the alcohol they had running through their veins. When the picture was taken, the girl handed everything to Izzy and all of them approached her to see the white picture. They had to wait a few seconds for the photo to be whirred, although they were gonna like it anyway. Finn and Chop looked like proper fools, as always. They always played and made themselves look like fools when pictures were taken. The rest of them were smiling. Rae and Chloe were hugging each other tightly. Since they became friends, they used to hug quite a lot. Rae wasn't used to that hugging policy, but it was fine with her. She liked Chloe. She was a good friend. And Izzy and Archie? They joined the lads, laughing at them while keeping an eye to the camera.

"Chop, your guns nearly don’t fit in that picture!" Rae started laughing hard, followed by the rest of the gang. Chop made himself a fool again, showing his _guns_ at the gang again. He looked like some kind of superhero…

"I probably should go..." Archie said, wiping his tears with the back of his hand, holding his black glasses with the other.

"Yeah, I think so, too..." Izzy followed, following him afterwards.

"So, is this a goodbye?" Rae said, pouting a little bit.

"It's late... Do you fancy going back to mine tomorrow Rae? Mum and I will cook a cake. You can come too Izz, if you fancy it." Chloe smiled at both girls.

"Sure!" Rae and Izzy thumbed up. "Right, if everybody's leaving, I should probably head off." Rae pointed to the other side of the street, staring at every one of the gang. She was the only one living in that part of Stamford, so she had to come back quickly. 11.20pm wasn't a happy hour to walk on her own in Stamford.

"I'll walk you home, Rae..." Finn grabbed Rae's arm and linked it with his own. "See ya!"

The couple left the gang go, while they took the other journey to the other part of their town. It wasn't that long, but Friday night and Rae living so far away from where the gang lived...

"So, did you have fun then?" Finn kept his eyes on the road, following every lamppost in their way.

"It was fun, yeah..." She looked at her feet, trying not to fall to the floor. She was starting to have hallucinations of the white lines painted on the end of the road. They were being multiple, triple... "I think I've drunk too much. I'm totally pissed!" She said, laughing without breaking the eye contact with the yellow painting on the floor.

"Yeah, me too." He answered, following her laughter, grabbing her arm tighter.

"I'm not gonna be able to wake up tomorrow... My stomach ache will be terrible." They kept laughing at their own truths, knowing that was what it was going to happen the following day.

Apart from all the beers and snakebites they ordered in The Swan, the bartender of the place gave them two more rounds of tequila. It was the first time they tasted that type of drink.

"I don't wanna go home, Rae..." Finn stopped when they were two streets left from Rae's house. She stopped when her arm was forced to stay still, so she looked around and caught Finn staring at her. "Do you really have to go home?"

She shrugged. She didn't have to. Linda said nothing about her coming home early. She obviously knew her daughter was about to celebrate her birthday with her friends. It was obvious she was going to be late. The only thing: Someone should walk Rae's home, in that case.

"Not really..."

"Let's go for a walk..."

They turned around, following the same street they were walking before but they turned left - instead of right. The couple walked in silence, as some birds, cats and cars were making the noise for them. It was nice. Although they were in the middle of winter, the second week of December, the weather felt nice. Cold and fresh air hitting their warm faces.

"Your nose is red." Finn played his index finger, making her laugh for an instant. She put her hand over it, covering herself and keeping her nose warm. No point in doing that, because it was going to be impossible if they were outside.

"Shut up!" She hit his arm, finally letting him go and walking by herself. The air made the alcohol leave for a few seconds, although she was still pissed. "Let's go there and sit, I don't wanna walk anymore." Rae pointed with her chin at one of the seats in the park. Then, she grabbed a mini bottle of beer she had on her bag pack. "Let's sit down for a while, yeah?"

She sat in the middle of nowhere and opened the crystal bottle, taking a long sip and leaning it to Finn, asking if he wanted without saying a word. He took it in his hands and sat beside her, drinking some of the liquid.

“I thought it was colder than it is…” He screwed his face up and drank some more, leaving the bottle on the floor. He grabbed both extremes of his jacket and put them better around his body, letting himself lean on the cement floor. 

“It’s been in my bag since I left home.” She leaned too, but she quickly stood up again, feeling completely dizzy because of the alcohol in her body. “I feel like shit…”

“You alright?”

“Yeah, just… I think I’ve drunk too much…” She said, laughing in the process. She closed her eyes and rolled her legs up against her chest, making herself a big ball.

“I can take you home if you don’t feel good…”

“It’s alright. I’m alright…” She raised her face to look at him with a smile on her lips.

They kept in silence for a while, hearing one another breathe. Stamford was a quiet town, day and night. No strange stuff happened in that place.

“Fuck!” He grabbed the beer bottle and Rae’s hand, but she just ignored him. “Rae!” He tried to make her stand up, but she was more interested in something that was happening on the ground. “RAE!”

“What?” She finally stared at him, furrowing her forehead.

“Seriously, are you deaf?”

“Sorry, I couldn’t hear you.”

“Of course you could hear me! Stand up!” He stretched her arm, making her fall on the floor. “Fuck Rae! Stand up!”

“Why?” She yelled at him. She put her hands on the floor to help her stand up and then she saw them. A police car was at the other side of the park and both cops were about to go out of it. “FUCK!” She grabbed her bag, staring at her friend, waiting for instructions.

Finn took Rae’s hand in one of them and ran on the opposite direction from where the police cops were standing. Being drunk and running in the middle of the night on her birthday weren’t her expectations of the day. She had dreamt about having a big party on her place, with her friends, or maybe going to the cinema. Something simple. Running from cops wasn’t in the list. Both of them were laughing while running, not noticing where they were going, although it didn’t matter too much. The only thing they had in mind was running of them.

 

Finn grabbed the almost empty beer bottle and drank what it was left and turned his face to look at Rae. He didn't say anything. He stared at her for almost three minutes when she began to feel strange around him and she finally did the same as him. Both of them stared into their eyes, keeping the silence as another friend of them.

"Is it true?" Finn spoke after a while. She didn't understand what he was trying to say, but she didn't answer.

She avoided Finn's gaze and took the chance to look everything around her. The floor was cold, although she didn't feel it that way because of the booze. Her arse did feel it. That December was being colder than other years and she regretted she only had a simple jumper with her formal cardigan with herself. Thank God she was pissed as fuck to feel much of the cold air of winter.

She tried to listen something. Anything that could give her a hint of where they were hiding. Nothing. Nothing apart from their breath and her heart beating like she had run the Stamford marathon. Then, she recognized the place. They used to come there when they were little. It was the old sport centre. Finn learnt how to play football in that green field while she waited for her mum to pick them up after school. She never was good with sports, Finn was. That's why she was always waiting for him, because he was always doing extracurricular activities.

"Have you ever had an orgasm, Rae?" He asked with his eyes staring at the floor. 

"What?"

"Have you?"

"No." She could feel how her cheeks reddened in an instant. She avoided his eyes, looking at her hands while playing with her fingers.

"It's alright... Nothing to be embarrassed about..." He still had the beer in his hands, so he left it in his feet.

He unzipped one of the pockets of his jacket and grabbed a small but flat box covered in a red and green wrapping paper and handed it to Rae.

"Here..."

She raised her eyes to look at him and the present he had in his hands.

"Is this a present? A birthday present?"

He just shrugged as an answer, keeping the grin to himself. "Sort of..."

And she opened it. The new Oasis album in her hands, wrapped in a shabby wrapping paper from the local record shop.

"Is this...?" She returned her gaze to him, biting her bottom lip and hugging his shoulders immediately. She gave him a quick kiss on his cheek in return. "You didn't have to..."

"It's alright..."

"Did I tell you how much I love you?"

"Not enough..."

She opened the plastic case, taking the small book from inside so she could check all the lyrics and pictures. It was the first album Finn had gifted her. She couldn’t stop the smile on her face; it was a reflex of her happiness.

“Thank you, Finn…”

She grabbed his cheeks and leant for a kiss on his cheek. How many kisses had received Finn that night? Uncountable. She inhaled some air, noticing Finn’s odour: A mix between cigarette and cheap cologne, probably from his dad. And she felt it. Them. His lips on her own. Her eyes were fixed in his eyelashes, mesmerized by how his eyes were playing under his eyelids. Her hands fell to her sides, and Finn took the chance to grab one of them and entwine their fingers together.

Finn’s lips, once again, felt really nice against hers. She could savour the taste of beer and cigarette on them. Some vodka that he drank hours before was still in the corner of his lips. She gave up on the kiss for an instant. The goose bumps in her belly hurt, but not in a painful but a joyful way. But she had to stop. Her body didn’t want to, and how would she stop kissing the king of Hotsville, as known as Finn Nelson. Who would? She did.

 _“What are you doing Finn?”_ She asked, but Finn’s lips were still over hers _. “Finn!”_

But her body didn’t answer. She wanted to stop. _Stop kissing Finn_ , she was telling to herself. But they felt too nice to let them go. It was only a kiss… Just a kiss. As any other kiss they shared before. They’d snog each other for a couple of minutes, they would shyly say they should go home, Finn would walk her home with a ‘ _See ya’_ and they’d say goodbye ‘til next morning.

He raised his free hand to her cheek, caressing her skin with his fingertips while his lips were still playing with Rae’s. She put her hand on his side under his jacket, grabbing his shirt in her fist and made him more room beside her.

Moments later, Finn stopped grabbing Rae’s hand and put it on her knee, driving his fingers up to her thigh. He wasn’t realising what he was doing to Rae, but if he kept doing that… If he kept caressing places he shouldn’t be touching with his fingers… She’d ask. She’d ask for more. And a couple of kisses wouldn’t be enough. She knew she wouldn’t get any of those things she always thought in the four walls of her room. She was a teenage girl and she wanted to experience things. Chloe talked about things. The gang talked about things. And if he kept touching her…

“I wanna make you feel good, Rae…” He pleaded against her lips, whispering.

And his hand went to her groin right after.

His lips were no longer against her mouth, nor his tongue. She felt like she was melting herself when his lips wetly kissed her neck. _God, that feels good_ , she thought. He began to rub his palm against her bits, what made her whimper. He laughed against the skin of her neck, without stopping his touch in her leggings.

Her body was ecstatic by then. She didn’t know what she should do. Should she stop him? Maybe touch him back? Kiss him again so they could be in the same position? But again, her brain and her body weren’t speaking the same language. Finn moaned when he felt Rae’s hand in his jeans. His mid-erection grew in a matter of milliseconds with just that touch. And Rae felt it. She moved her hand, unafraid of her actions, wanting to feel and know Finn’s body more.

“Does it feel good?” She whispered against his ear. He just nodded, or that’s what it seemed like he was doing.

He stopped kissing her neck and pushed of Rae’s shoulders so she could get laid on the floor. She stared at him widely from below, freaking out on the inside. Was she…? Is he…? He put a lock of hair behind her ear, lying on top of her.

“I want to do it, Rae…”

“Wait, what?”

He laughed shyly, closing his eyes and lowering his head a little, not having Rae’s eyes against his when he finally opens them.

“I’m pissed as hell…” He said to himself. He opened his eyes, looking at her without erasing the smile on his face. “I really want to do it. Here.” He closed the gap between their noses, touching hers with the tip of his own. He played with her for a couple of seconds, until he stopped again. “With you…” His lips are briefly touching hers, brushing them without kissing.

He pressed his groin against her pelvis, making her moan to his lips. He moved over her again, in an insistent way. He laughed again, pressing his forehead into her shoulder and hiding himself from her eyes. His cheeks reddened in a short period of time, biting his bottom lip; without believing the bizarre situation both friends were in. He began to kiss her neck again, making the effort into turning some of her pale skin into a purple tone.

Rae’s hands had been in Finn’s pants since she got laid, touching the bit of skin his shirt could left uncovered. She even grabbed him from his arse, just once. Just because he thrusted into her. She did do it unconsciously. She finally landed her hands to the front part of his jeans, unbuttoning the two buttons and unzipping his fly. Finn raised his head from above, staring at her for a millionth time that night.

“Are you sure?” His lips parted in two, mouth-watering for more kisses.

She nodded, pushing his jeans and underwear a few inches down. He just kissed her. Roughly. Dirty. The kiss turned clumsy because of the high they were in. The alcohol was running through their veins, still. Finn’s hands moved part of Rae’s dress, stretching her leggings out. She let a yell escape from her mouth when she felt how cold it was the cement floor.

“Fuck Finn!” She punched his arm and he stood up over her legs. He laughed at her and put his jacket where Rae should be laying. Then, he forced her to lay down on the floor, pecking her lips one more time and standing up again. He pulled her leggings out of her legs while he stared at her pale skin. Some black hair surrounded her skin, but he didn’t matter. He couldn’t even appreciate it. No lights. No moon. They were alone in the dark.

He laid himself on top of his friend for the second time, now their groins making contact without any sort of clothing in between. Finn kissed her lips shortly, moistening them with his saliva. He kissed her for a long time, caressing the skin of her hips and her thighs while he moved his body over hers.

“Finn…” She whispered.

He stopped kissing her, looking at her eyes from over her body.

“Do you…? I mean, we should…” She swallowed, noticing her cheeks reddening each second and she pointed with her index finger to Finn’s bits. “Do you have…?”

His face reddened in an instant. He knew what she was asking for and he had forgotten to take it out of his pocket.

“Oh, yes.” He fumbled with his pockets, grabbing his wallet and taking the only johnny he had. He opened the bundle and took off the condom. She stared at him, looking what he had in between his hands and watching him squeezing the tip and rolling the plastic textile in his erection. She swallowed again.

“That… that’s not gonna fit.” She whispered to herself.

He approached her, giggling when he heard her. He kissed her cheek and smiled fondly at her.

“We can stop if you want to, Rae… It’s no big deal…”

“No. I want to…” She gave the same smile back, grabbing Finn by his neck and kissing his lips smoothly.

“Just tell me if something’s wrong…” He spoke against her lips. She made him lean in between her legs, opening them wider for him to be more comfortable. They kissed for seconds, minutes, hours… Both of them wanting to keep the peace and go slowly, in case something happened. It shouldn’t be, but it could. “I’m gonna do it, okay?” He whispered. She nodded a couple of times while Finn straightened his body away from her, leaning one hand against her face and the other one to his sex. He tried to feel his way in Rae’s body, where he was more comfortable in and where his thing should go _in_. He pushed against her when he found out, letting a moan from his lips out.

On the other side, Rae wasn’t feeling as good as Finn. Feeling Finn’s boner inside of her didn’t feel as good as people used to brag about. Her instincts said that _that_ shouldn’t be here, that _that_ thing wasn’t a part of her body. She took a deep breath to calm herself, and Finn wasn’t helping. It was easier to put your thing in someone’s hole and have a good time. But she wasn’t.

She bit her lips and closed her eyes, not wanting to make any eye contact with Finn. He began to push further when she couldn’t stop it and whimpered. He stopped immediately. He kissed her lips softly, waiting for her to open her eyes to look at him. After a long minute waiting for a move, Rae opened her eyes and stared at him with a weak smile.

“Hey…” He murmured.

“Hiya…” She answered.

They both stared at each other for another long minute.

“Everybody said your first time is the scariest, but not awkward…” He said, laughing against her lips. His cheeks were now completely turned into a red colour. The tip of his nose was cold, though. He shivered over her and she landed her hands around him, hugging him. That made his body push a bit further against her. She wrinkled her nose, almost closing her eyes. “Should I…?”

“Gently, yeah?” She answered before kissing his lips once again. It was the only distraction she could have to avoid her thoughts of pain. She wanted to feel nice. Finn always made her feel nice. Finn told her he wanted to make her feel good. She did have to try, at least.

Finn pushed once more against her hips, biting Rae’s lips and trying not to fall over her body with every move. She left her lips and kissed Finn’s neck, making him groan against her cheek. She liked that. She liked making Finn feel good. She liked the way he sounded when he moaned. Plus, he was leaving her cheek full of saliva when he did. She grabbed his cheeks, staring at him and kissing his lips deeply. She wanted to taste him.

She opened her legs wider and started moving her hips against her partner. Finn rubbed himself against her groin and that felt really good for her. She kept doing that for a few times, still grabbing Finn’s cheek with her hands without letting him leave. She loved the taste of his tongue. It was a mix of different things, but those were now gone. Now it was only him. His taste. His _personal_ taste.

But before the thing got any intense, Finn thrusted deeper a couple of times and he stopped, moaning against her lips. And that was it. Everything. She was starting to feel good. She was starting to enjoy sex in her full extension and it was over before it even begun.

Finn opened his eyes, which kept close for most of the time because of the kisses and the pleasure, and smiled again at Rae. But he wasn’t the same. That wasn’t his smile. And his stare. No, they weren’t. They were… _different._ They felt different. He leaned over her, pressing their bodies together and kissed her sweetly, maintaining one of his hands in her cheek. He rolled over her body and stayed on her side, looking at her from the corner of his eye without wiping his smile away.

Where was the gateway? She was supposed to feel free as a person. And she did not feel anything.

She looked at the roof of the place, dark and maybe full of spiders and bugs. She licked her lips and made eye contact with Finn. He landed his hands to his boner; half boner and picked the condom out of it. He threw it out somewhere and moved his body to stay close to her, not before pulling his jeans back on its place and zipping them.

“Sorry for… For cumming so quick…” He said with an embarrassed tone in his voice.

“It’s okay…” What else would she say?

“I know you didn’t… That you don’t…” She stared at him, her face becoming red again. He always did that when he was nervous. She smiled fondly at him, going to answer that it was okay, it was fine if he had fun; but he answered right away. “Just… Let me return the favour, yeah?”

She furrowed her eyebrows, keeping an eye on his movements and how he put some of his fingers inside his mouth. He dampened them with his saliva and smiled mischievously. And she felt them. While he was kissing her neck again. She felt his fingers in her lady bits. Taking care of _her_.  He didn’t seem to know where to touch, but he was trying. She moaned, kissing his lips while doing a mess of his hair with her hands around his neck. He was just touching on the outside, but it felt so much better than having _him_ inside her. And he did it. He introduced a finger inside of her while he was still tapping at her. Finn smiled successfully, catching Rae’s bottom lip with his teeth. She was moaning more often than before. Finn’s finger rubbing that part of her private parts felt amazing. And in a matter of seconds, she finally did it. She passed through the orgasms gateway.

Finn kept tapping after she reached her orgasm, but Rae’s hand pushed it backwards. It felt uncomfortable now. He cleaned his hand in his jeans and stared at his friend. His broad grin was infectious. Rae smiled at him the same way.

“Did that make you feel good?”

She just nodded. Then, he helped her to put her leggings and knickers on its place again and both of them laid beside one another. Finn took the chance and rose his legs, putting them on top of Rae’s knees.

“Is that okay?”

“Yeah…”


	12. Chapter 12

Seven months and sixteen days. Not that she was counting, her diary did. Seven months and sixteen days since she lost her virginity to Finn. She, as a fool, thought after that night everything would be different between them. Well, she was right. It all changed.

Finn took her home, kissing her on the cheek and coming back to his. She wrote 6 pages with nothing else but describing words giving the details of how good it felt losing herself in Finn. How kind he was, how his lips tasted, how his body felt like against hers… That night it was a night to remember.

She blinked her eyes while drinking some of her red glass full of vodka. She didn’t remember how much she drank that night, but she wasn’t gonna stop. Not while Finn fucking Nelson was snogging Hannah Mason.

“Rae?”

Chloe appeared from nowhere and stood on her left.

“Rae?”

But Rae couldn’t hear her. Not while Finn kept himself busy.

“Rae?”

“What?”

“Are you deaf?”

“What? No…”

“Don’t you think you’ve drunk enough for tonight?”

Mommy Chloe came to the rescue for Rae the depressive.

Chloe knew what happened that night with Finn. She had been following their story for years, and now, she was terribly mad at him.

“C’mon Rae. Have a dance with me…” Chloe grabbed Rae’s glass and put it on the sink, taking her hands in between hers and trying to move Rae from her spot in the kitchen.

Chop had prepared a massive party because it was Archie’s birthday. He was the king of partying. Apparently, Archie didn’t want to celebrate his birthday and when Chop found out, he organised that secret sexy party for the gang and some friends of school. Rae didn’t want to go, but it was a surprise for Archie. She had to go.

That’s why she was there, making a fool of herself, drinking all the beers and vodka bottles she found. She never left the kitchen but to celebrate Archie’s arrival. Afterwards, she closed herself in the big kitchen and serving the drinks to everyone. That was a good distraction.

“He’s a wanker, Rae… He doesn’t deserve your attention. C’mon, let’s go and find some pretty boys for us, yeah?” She knew she’d dance with Chloe for a couple of songs and then, she’d keep drinking. She’d steal Chop’s drink or Archie’s beer.

 

Seven months and fifteen days ago…

_She waited outside the chippy more than ten minutes on her own. They were supposed to be there. They agreed to meet so they could go bowling that afternoon._

_She didn’t sleep much that night, half part because of the excited news she had to tell Chloe and the other half, because of her best friend. She had strong feelings for him. She knew it wasn’t love, but she did fancy him a lot through the years. Growing up was changing her in more than physical ways._

_She raised her head after hearing some footsteps at the end of the street. Finn. She couldn’t stop her smile and waited there for him to approach her. When he finally came, he put his back against the red wall and gave her a nod and a brief smile._

_“Hiya…”_

_“Hey…” She noticed how her cheeks were turning into a bright red. Was he gonna ask about yesterday? Was he gonna ask her out? Maybe a date? She’d be happy with just a date._

_“Did… did your mum said something about you being late? Yesterday, I mean…” He said, picking his rolled cigarette from behind his ear and lighting it._

_“Nah, she didn’t…” Her cheeks now, completely red, seemed like she had come from running a marathon._

_“Good.” She kept staring at him for 8 long seconds but nothing else. That was it? Just good? Nothing about them? For fuck’s sake, they had had sex! He could even joke about doing it in that field, or the bloody condom. Anything._

_She was gonna ask him about it when Izzy appeared from somewhere. She said something about Chop picking up Archie and Chloe, and that’s why they were late._

Sadness. That’s what she had felt for months. And it was not all because they didn’t speak of what happened _that night_ , but because her friendship with Finn changed. First of all, it was Jenny. A couple of weeks after, Mary came across him while he was helping his father in the supermarket.

Was he not interested in her? If not, why did he do what he did? She was happy living her life without worries, without late nights. Linda started to worry when she found out Rae had been crying one night. She just told her mum she failed an exam.

She wasn’t expecting to feel that way. Not by then. It wasn’t fair for her to feel bad about herself, about her relationship with her best friend… He was supposed to be there for her, not somewhere with a girl she didn’t even try to meet or know. She knew she’d be losing her time with someone that wouldn’t be introduced to the gang. Finn just needed a full snog and a bit of a shag session… Rae could have done that, but he wasn’t interested in her in that way anymore. He used her. He used her to get rid of his fears and insecurities and then, be able to be with, what it looked like, a _real_ woman.

And it wasn’t all about the sex. It was all about losing her friend. The one that had always been there by her side. He’s been there for her, in all kind of situations. It wasn’t a fact of growing up together and then, split up with their friendship. He was a strong pillar in her life, and now he was gone.

It was hard to get rid of Chloe and get some new drinks, but she finally did it. She left her behind. She said something about a couple of handsome boys who were checking her out and that she was going to say hi to them. She took the chance and left. The kitchen was alone again, so she could pick another can of beer from the fridge and keep an eye on everyone in the living room.

 

Six months and 4 days ago…

_All she needed in her body was booze. Vodka. Whiskey. Tequila. It didn’t matter. She passed all her exams and she was ready for a good party. Even if all her thoughts were put in Finn’s, she kept herself sane enough to concentrate in her exams and, at least, pass them. Her grades were not the best, but enough because of her mood._

_A massive rave was happening near Lincolnshire and, thanks to Chop, Archie and Finn who had their bikes; they had been able to go._

_They were all celebrating the end of their exams, all drinking and dancing against the music, rolling into the bunch of people: some of them were known, some of them were not._

_She danced with Izzy and Chloe for almost all night, forgetting about the boys who were, maybe, snogging some girls at some corner of the place. Even Archie, who didn’t show affection for people those days. Finn came once, he danced a couple of songs and left. He said something about getting more drinks for them. When she turned around, his hand was in someone’s arse while his lips were sucking another woman’s mouth. Not hers. Another’s._

_She expected, after a few drinks, Finn would come to her and tell her stuff about what happened. A month and a half had past and they didn’t have any kind of conversation about the thing. She hoped he came after her, he danced with her and then, maybe, just maybe, he would kiss her in front of all those people. Or maybe he would take her hand and lead her outside, where he’d chat with her for hours and made her smile and tell her how sorry he was for all the trouble he’d done for the last past days._

_None of that happened. Not a kiss, not a chat… not even a touch. Anything._

She picked every glass she found around the house. She didn’t even bother asking for who it was from, she just drank it all in one go. Chloe was now talking to some guys on the corridor. Rae sat on the sofa, waiting for her friend while she finished her beer can. She’d probably go for another one later.

“Rae! You should stop drinking!” Chloe sat on her side and grabbed her empty can and gave her an accusatory gaze. One of her eyebrows was raised, and Rae crossed her arms against her chest, avoiding her.

“I’m not a child, Chlo…”

“Aren’t ya? Because you’re here, all moody and drinking without having fun. I’d say you look like a grumpy old man…”

“Whatever…” She made the effort to finish the liquid in the can but she realized it was fully empty. She stood up but Chloe did the same, shoving her away.

“No, I’ll bring you some water. You sit down and don’t go anywhere.” Chloe was sometimes quiet overprotective with Rae. She looked like she was her mum. Especially when she was drunk.

Chloe left her on the sofa and she waited. She didn’t feel well, anyway. Too much alcohol running through her veins. Her eyes were looking something on the opposite side of the room when someone sat beside her, where Chloe was sat before she left to the kitchen.

“You alright?”

She turned her face to him and nodded; keeping her _I’m not interested in other’s bullshit_ face. He looked like Little Al, but it wasn’t him.

“What are you doing here on your own? Are you not having fun?”

“Do I look like I’m having fun?” Yes. Moody Rae came into action.

“Not really…”

And then, he appeared on her visual field.  Right in front of her, it was him. Finn. Sitting on the armchair, holding his beer, alone. She kept his eyes on him while that Little Al doppelganger was still talking to her. Finn didn’t notice she was there in front of him or he really took the effort to ignore her.

“Hm?”

“I said what your name is.”

“Rae…”

“Blake. Nice to meet you, Rae…” He went to take her hand in one of his as a hello but she refused. “Do you wanna have a dance?”

“Sorry, not interested.”

Keeping an eye on Finn was making her sick. He was now with her, holding her by the waist whilst she was kissing his neck. They changed positions after a couple of minutes and then it was him who was kissing her behind her ear. He looked concentrated in what he was doing. His hands were everywhere in her back, touching her butt sometimes, squeezing her thighs with his eyes closed. He then looked straight at her, although his lips kept moving against her skin. At least, if he was going to look at her blatantly, he could stop kissing the blonde one. They looked at each other for about ten seconds, waiting for the other to do something, say something.

Rae stood up and left.

Five months and twenty-nine days ago…

_“And you, Archie?” Izzy asked while eating some of the fruit she had on her plate._

_The gang sat on one of the benches the school had outside. They were allowed to be there during the break, just because they were the oldest students of the school. The teachers knew most of them smoked, so better if they did somewhere safe._

_“Just a ninety-seven per cent…” He answered simply. He was a smart student and his marks were always the best._

_“Just a ninety-seven per cent? I only got forty-four.” Chop, stealing a slice of orange from Izzy’s hands, groaned after saying his marks on his history exam._

_“I want to be a historian. I should have a hundred.”_

_While Chop and Archie kept arguing about their exams and what was wrong in both of them, the red-haired asked Rae about her maths exam._

_“Not bad. Just sixty per cent.”_

_“Just that? I thought you were good with numbers.”_

_“I suppose I wasn’t concentrated enough…”_

_Rae shrugged and took her sandwich from her bag, keeping herself busy until the bell would ring for them to come back inside the building. She ate quietly, doing as if she was paying attention to the other’s conversation. They were talking about Dawn’s party last weekend._

_Two minutes later, Finn walked through the big playground, holding his leather jacket. He sat opposite Rae. He stared at her with a grin but she didn’t smile back, what made him change into his grumpy sod mood._

_“Finny!” A voice from behind screamed. She turned around and saw her: Hannah._

_She went after him and sat on his lap, making the rest of the gang stay quiet for a few seconds but then, they started where they left about Dawn’s story._

_“I’ve missed you all day, bunny…” She grabbed Finn’s cheeks in between her hands and made him stay a few inches from her mouth. “Did you miss me, bunny?”_

_He nodded. He gave her a quick kiss and put one of his hands around her waist, letting the other rest of one of her arse cheeks._

_“Why bunny?” Izzy frowned her red eyebrows, staring thoroughly at Hannah._

_“Because his skin is as soft as a-”_

_Rae stood up and left._

She left Chop’s house without saying anything. Chloe might be looking after her but she didn’t bother to tell her she was leaving. She wasn’t in the mood for anything. If she had the chance to speak to Chloe after what happened with Finn, she’d tell her to go and tell him to fuck off and she would have arranged some dancing or kissing game to pair Rae with someone else.

Now, the only thing she wanted to do was lie in her bed and cry all night. She missed Finn. After _that_ night, she thought their friendship changed, but it wasn’t like that. Nothing changed. She was still his friend and he was still hers. He maybe thought it was a one off; they’ve done loads of things loads of times. Then, they never spoke about it and their relationship was normal again.

When Finn and Hannah started going out, she explicitly said she didn’t want Rae around Finn. Not while he was _hers._   Rae tried to tell Finn what Hannah told her and all he did was telling her off because she didn’t like his new girlfriend. Rae didn’t mean to be possessive over her best friend, but he sometimes was wrong about his loving choices. All of the gang thought the same.

Days followed by and the calls stopped, meeting at the record shop was not just a thing of Rae and Finn, it became a thing of Hannah and Finn, where sometimes Rae could joke about their music taste. Watching a film on Friday night was definitely over because, obviously Hannah would stay over and they _needed privacy_ , Hannah said.

She opened her bedroom’s door and let herself fall over the mattress. She felt heavier than ever. She couldn’t move. Her body was too heavy. That’s when the tears escaped her eyes. She tried to hide her sobs, knowing she could wake her mum up and she didn’t want Linda to find her in that state. She had already seen her daughter cry a couple of times in the last three months, and it’s something she won’t let her mum see ever again.

Maybe… That’s why Finn wasn’t interested. Maybe… the reason he wasn’t talking about what happened was because he felt embarrassed. Did he regret it? He… he said it was alright. They were alright.

Memories of Stacey and her gang came to her mind. Maybe she was right. Maybe she didn’t deserve to be loved. Finn seemed interested in other kind of girls. She was the only one different from the rest. The one that Finn wasn’t interested in any kind, apparently, or that’s what it looked like. Maybe Finn thought she wasn’t enough for her. He always liked skinny girls, not morbid wales like Rae…

Horrible words from Stacey’s mouth echo in her head. Minger, jabba… She felt her cheeks completely wet because of the tears, and she dried them with her hands. She sat on the side of the bed and opened the first drawer of her bedside table. There she had the picture she always had on top of the table: A picture of her and Finn, laughing after Chop said one of his jokes on the park. It was one of the first pictures Izzy took that day. She grabbed it in between her hands and held it.

Maybe it was true. Maybe it wasn’t just Hannah who didn’t want her around. Maybe it was him too. He could have taken the chance of being with Hannah to get rid of her. He now was interested in other things rather than spending time with her at home. It was funnier and much more interesting fooling with a girl somewhere. 

She stood up and walked until she was in front of her desk, grabbing the scissors that were in the ugliest pot. She sat on the chair and let the picture over the wood table. She opened the scissors and she scratched his face out carelessly. She held the tears behind her eyeballs and bit her bottom lip, closing her eyes for a moment.

Rae would regret doing that, but in that moment, it was the only thing she was sure she wanted to do. She was completely drunk and she wouldn’t remember anything from that night.

She picked the sharp end of the device and held it against her index fingertip. What if…? It was a small cut. She did it without realizing. It didn’t hurt that much. Actually, she felt nothing. She grabbed the fabric of her skirt in one hand, holding the blade of the scissors with the other…

… and she cut.


	13. Chapter 13

He knocked the door once again, as the ring bell wasn’t working. She had to be inside for sure. He knew.

A minute later and Finn was still there, on her doorstep, holding his tear inside his eyes. He knew he shouldn’t be there, but he had nowhere else to go. His father was playing vynils at home and he didn’t feel comfortable in his room. Home wasn’t an option when he felt like he was going to cry at any moment. So his best option was his best friend’s.

Another knock but nothing. He walked backwards, a few steps, taking a glimpse of what it was Rae’s window and the light was unnoticeable, but there she was. Finn remembered Linda hid a spare key for Rae in case she forgot them inside. He knelt himself in front of Linda’s flowerpots and grabbed the spare key from the garden’s door. He went around the house and, carefully, he opened the back door. It was always locked when Linda had to work at night.

He looked around but there was no sight of Rae. He walked upstairs and heard some noises coming from Rae’s door. The light passed through it, so she might be listening some tunes, which would explain why she didn’t answer the door earlier. He didn’t knock on the door before he opened and walked in.

He closed the door after him, facing it without caring who was behind him. He took a deep breath before turning around. It had been three weeks since the last time he came by. He knew he shouldn’t be there but he didn’t have anywhere else to go. She would get him. She would… comfort him.

She was sat on her bed, staring at him with her pale face. She hid her face with her long and dark hair and said nothing.

“Can I come in?” His voice sounded broken, but he wasn’t allowed to sob, not even cry in front of her. At least, _not yet._

“You’re already in…” She seemed scared by the way she answered him. He suspected it was because she didn’t expect him. She didn’t expect anyone to enter her house at that time on a Thursday night.

“Can I sit down?” He pleaded. She just shrugged.

“Suppose…” Just the way he always said it and it hurt more than he thought. Did he always sound like that? It sounded like she didn’t care enough…

He left the door and sat on her side, leaning his head against the wall in his back. He closed his eyes and bit his lips. He should say something; explain why he was there, that he was sorry about what happened a few weeks ago…

“How did you…?”

“Oh, the key in your mum’s flowerpots.” He tried to give her a weak smile, but she didn’t bother to look at him. “Where were you? I rang a couple of times and-”

“What do you want, Finn?”

She moved her body so she was fully looking at him. The room fell in a complete silence for a long minute. His brain, trying to make a full sentence to explain why he was in her room instead of his own. Should he tell her why he’s really there?

“Wanted to see ya…”

“Anything else?” She said, covering more her body with her toothpaste dressing gown.

He didn’t respond. He lay there, waiting for her to put some music on, as she always did when they didn’t have anything to say.

Well, he did have something to say. The problem was he didn’t know how to tell her. She’d go mad. She’d yell at him and, if she had the chance (and force) to throw her bed to him, she’d definitely do it without backing out.

She stood up, leaving the boy in her bed and grabbed some CDS from the corner, where the record player was.

“Me and Hannah split up.” That was it.

Rae just turned her head over to check on him for a second and then, she ignored him. Her eyes were checking the backlist, reading each title song.

“Why?”

She really did not look interested in his words, he thought. No gazes, no smiles, no interest. She could fake a little bit and pretend she’s worried about him.

“Apparently, I wasn’t enough…” She frown her eyebrows and crossed her arms under her breasts, still holding the CD box.

“Did she tell you that?” One of her eyebrows had risen in that moment.

“Oh, no.” He tried to fake a laugh as if he didn’t matter breaking up with his now, ex. His hands were now playing with the sleeves of his denim jacket. “I figured it out after watching her on the back seat of Macca’s new car.”

“Oh, mate…” She came back to her spot beside him and put one hand over his tight. He took it as an affectionate caress, because he knew Rae wasn’t a hug person. Nor her family. “You were really fond of her…”

“It’s okay… We weren’t going anywhere, actually…” He said, shrugging. Rae swallowed a smile for herself. “I just wanted to say sorry. For everything.”

“Nah, forget it.” She dropped the CD on top of the bed night table and mimicked Finn’s pose against the wall.

“We alright, then?”

“Yeah, we’re alright.” She winked at him, bumping his side with her elbow. He slid his left hand over Rae’s knee, caressing the black fabric of her leggings, noticing how his fingers were turning a bit wet.

“You ought to get changed. Your legs are wet. Aren’t you uncomfortable?”

Rae immediately stood up in front of Finn, keeping herself quiet for a couple of seconds.

“Yeah, I might do it later.” She gave him a brief smile and pointed at the door with her index. “Want a brew? I’m thirsty.”

“Sure…” He answered with a satisfactory smile in his face.

They fought three weeks ago. He didn’t think the thing couldn’t get any worse between his best friend and girlfriend. Apparently, it could. Rae kept avoiding him when Hannah was around. The girls couldn’t stand one another, but he always thought they could do an effort to get on when he was around.

Rae got tired of it real quick. She couldn’t stand how much he changed because of her. He wasn’t realising the only thing Hannah wanted was Finn stop being friends with Rae.

Their last discussion ended up in something like ‘ _It’s me or her, Finn.’_ After not receiving any answer in the next ten seconds, Rae thought it was obvious. _She_ had to leave. For good.

She left him whilst she went downstairs to make some tea. He waited for her in her room, checking the albums she put on top on the bedside table. Stone Roses, Blur and Radiohead were there. Then, he noticed some blood spread into the plastic case of the CDs. Some of his fingers were covered in blood and he immediately checked himself for any hint of a cut or anything in his arms and t-shirt.

After not finding any cut for the past thirty seconds, his eyes followed the closed door. Was the blood from…? He thought about her legs. He felt his hands get wet when he touched her tight…

Finn looked around for any tissue he could use to clean his hands. Rae lived in a mess by the state of her room. Drawers, desk, shelves… Even the wardrobe, but there wasn’t any tissue left anywhere. He sat back down on the bed and cleaned his fingers with the end of his shirt, when a silver thing caught his attention. It was almost hidden under the bed. He grabbed the thing and kept an eye on it. His eyes stared at the door once again, but soon they landed on the sharp blade.

Suddenly, the door was open. He stared off into space, noticing how Rae was closing the door again.

“Why you’ve got this?” He said, throwing the thing on the bed, waiting for her to see it. She didn’t answer. “Where did you get that from, Rae?” His eyes were now fixed on her. She stared at him in silence, holding the two mugs in her trembling hands.

“It’s from my mum’s.”

“What have you done?”

She took a deep breath before answering him.

“Nothing.”

“What did you do?” He asked again.

“I said nothing!”

He stood up and walked towards her, although she avoided his stare, keeping her eyes in something more interesting at her feet.

“Show me your legs.”

“No.”

“Show me your legs, Rae!”

“NO!”

“Show me your fucking legs, Rae!”

She shoved him away and left his side, going to the other corner of the room to feel free again. She dropped some tea in Finn’s shirt, though she didn’t notice. Her body started shaking, noticing how Finn was trying to approach her again. She closed her eyes, feeling how the tears were gathered around her eyelids. She couldn’t cry. She couldn’t cry or he’d know everything. He’d realise everything’s true.

“Rae…” His hand cupped her left cheek and his thumb fingertip caressed her skin. “Please, tell me…”

“It’s nothing.” He closed the distance between each other.

“Please… Tell me you haven’t done anything stupid…” He whispered, just a few inches away from her face. His hands grabbed the two mugs and left them over her desk.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you care?!” She yelled. Her face surrounded with tears now. “You’re not supposed to care anymore!” She tried to push him away from her, although he resisted. Her attempts to shove him away were no longer effective, so she let herself fall into the floor.

“What?”

“You’ve heard me…”

“Rae… Rae, please…”

“This is your fault…” She cried, burying her face in between her legs, holding her legs against her chest. “It’s all your fault…”

He squatted down in front of her, helping himself by putting his hands on Rae’s knees to not fall down. He caressed her hands but she denied his caresses.

“You said we were okay…”

“Does it look like it?”

He lay in front of her, grabbing her hands in between his. He gave them each a brief kiss, holding Rae’s gaze when she raised her eyes to look at him with tears in them.

“Rae… Rae, please, tell me why is it my fault…” His eyes felt wetter now.

“If I weren’t your friend, I wouldn’t feel the way I’m feeling…” She whispered.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I wouldn’t feel like shit every day because of you.”

“Because of me?” He furrowed his eyebrows without understand a thing coming from Rae’s mouth.

“I’m tired of the staring… the laughing…” A new tear escaped from the corner of her eye before whispering against her hands. “I can’t handle it anymore…”

“What can you not handle?” His hands took one of hers, pressing each one against hers, giving it warmth. Rae made the move to stand herself up but Finn didn’t let her. He wanted to keep her close to him. As much as he could.

“I like you, okay? I like you! And it’s not right for me to like you.” She spit it out without thinking.

_She… Liked him?_

“Why not?” He looked concerned, biting his bottom lip, trying to understand Rae’s words.

“Look at you, Mr. Perfect.” She said sarcastically. “You’re the fucking embodiment of horn. And me? Well, I’m me. Rae the fucking jabba…”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is. And I’m not the only one who thinks that too. It’s fucking obvious… I don’t even know why we’re still friends. We’re not from the same league, even.”

“Don’t say that, Rae.” He grabbed a piece of hair that covered her face and put it carefully behind her ear. “You’re amazing Rae.” She shook her head. “Yes, you are. You’re wonderful. I mean that.”

“Why would you say such things?”

“Because I like you!” He took a deep breath before keeping talking. “I fucking like you, Rae! I’ve always liked you!”

“I don’t believe you…”

“You better believe it, because it’s true.”

“Liar.”

“You, more than anyone, will know I can’t lie about my feelings.”

“It’s not fair…”

“Why?”

“Look at you. You’re pretty and sweet and kind…” She hid her face in her hands once again, trying to control her breathing to calm herself. “I’m ugly, and I’m fat. I tell jokes… I’m not even a girl.”

He laughed to himself, lowering his head to the carpet. He took her hands in his, sitting in front of her with his legs crossed.

“Rae…” He squeezed her hands in his own, waiting for her to raise her eyes. “Rae, please, look at me…” She took a moment for herself and bit the tip of her tongue, raising her gaze to finally look at him in the eye with her own covered in red. “ _You_ are a girl. I have no doubt about it.” He gave her a wink and a tilted smile.

She laughed, drying her eyes with the cuff of her shirt.

“Don’t do that again, Rae…” His eyes followed her tights. He touched one of them through the fabric of the legging, taking some of the robe clothing apart. “I beg you…” She took a look at his face, taking a glimpse of him biting his bottom lip. “I couldn’t stand losing my best friend…”

“You won’t…” She whispered, taking the chance to put his fringe on its place with her fingers. “I promise…”


	14. Chapter 14

His hand held the door knob tight. He hesitated during the last five minutes. Opening the door or not. What if he didn't like what the room had inside? What if he was doing the wrong thing? He should go back home and wait. Yes. That's what he had to do.

But his mind, muscles and hand didn't think the same as his heart. Moments later, the door was fully open, revealing a cold but white room filled with a couple of Oasis posters. Mixed with the Gallagher brothers pictures, there was a girl. A girl he knew. His hands then were shaking and his feet didn't move from the door frame. He waited for a hello, hi... just a word to feel himself welcomed to the room.

After a long minute in silence, he spoke.

“Rae...”

She turned around and checked his outfit with a simple gaze and went back to her task: writing long lists full of song titles. Finn, still on the other side of the room, followed the nurse's eyes and with a move of his chin, told her it was okay. He closed the door and sat on top of the bed.

“How are you?” He asked.

She shrugged.

“I suppose it couldn't get any worse...”

He stared at her quietly, grabbing his bag and taking two packs of batteries. He handed them to his friend with a smile and waited for her reaction.

“You said you ran off batteries, yesterday...”

She let out a brief smile and Finn felt happy just by that. Then, he picked the left chair on the corner of her desk and sat beside her, removing the batteries from his Walkman and changing them before turning the device on. He handed her one of the earphones, keeping one for himself and pressed play.

The atmosphere changed in mere seconds while  _Don't look back in anger_  played in the background.  

“How's everyone?”

“Fine, suppose... And you?” He answered without caring too much over the rest of the gang.

“Did Chloe pass maths? Because she told me she put effort in learning the exercises.”

“I don't care about Chloe.”

“And Archie? He said something about a history museum...”

“I don't care about Archie, neither.” He held her left hand with his own and spoke through a whisper. “I just care about you. You're the only one I think day and night right now.” He tried to make eye contact with her, although Rae didn't correspond. “How's it been today in 'ere?”

She shrugged again, pouting her lips before answering.

“Had this meeting with a new therapist, Doctor Gill. But he doesn't like to be called like that, so he told me to call him Kester.”

“What happened with the old one?”

“He doesn't work in here anymore.”

“And? How did it go?”

“He's crazy.” She said, holding a laughter to herself. “More than I am...”

“Why's that?” Finn asked, surprised.

“He made me walk into the room and asked what stuff I didn't like the room and I answered the painting were awful and he just threw them through the window. And he tried to make me feel responsible for that because I was mad.” He didn't get used to the speed of her words leaving her mouth. Years of practising and still, he sometimes got lost in the middle of her sentences.

“You're not mad.”

“Yes, I am, Finn.” She finished the little fight with that. Because every fight started with that word:  _mad._  “The thing is, he's kind of cool.”

“Just kinda?”

“Not as much as me, though.” She laughed, staring at Finn from the corner of the eye and bit her bottom lip. Then, her eyes got lost in some place of the wall in front of them and took a deep breath. “I told him about you.”

“So?” He said, confused with the change and way the conversation was going. He felt how the muscles of Rae's hand tensed while he still held it in his right hand.

“We talked about stuff... He wanted to know who you were. That's all... “He wants to know why did you left me on my own...”

He furrowed his eyebrows, not understanding what the point of that was. Of him. His eyes stayed fixed on her, pausing when he looked to her legs, covered in her usual black leggings. He was sure she had gauzes all around her legs, trying to heal her recent cuts.

“Actually, I'd like to understand why, too...” She turned her face to him, stopping the touch from their hands together and placing her own in her lap.

Instead of her, he should be the mad one. In fact, he was mad. He was mad, angry, furious, disappointed... because of her. Because of what she did and because  _that_  was the reason she was locked in that horrible and lonely place. Even if she promised not do it again, she did it. She promised, and she kept doing it anyway. Two more times. But what made him angrier wasn't the fact of the injury itself, but the way she was conscious of what she was doing those times.

“I’ve got stuff you might need...” He got his bag in between his legs and started searching for her English and maths books.

“Finn...”

“Can we not talk about that now?” Finn stopped her from taking the conversation where he couldn’t handle.

“It’s not you that is locked in here.” Rae reprimanded Finn. “So, I think we should...”

“I...”

Rae waited for him to speak, as she always did. 

“I just....”

“Hm?” Finn bit his lips and avoided her gaze.

“I’m always fucking everything up, Rae. And you know that.”

After that, a long pause followed. Finn didn’t want to talk about that sort of stuff because he wasn’t proud of it. He came here to see Rae, to talk to her about her mental issue and how was she coping being in there.

“I was a big knob head back then and I know I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have done most of the things I did... Hannah... You know how bitch she could be and... You know, I wasn’t… I wasn’t happy.”

He held his fringe with his left hand and tried to take it back, though it always came to its place itself. That made him feel nervous and anxious.

“What happened with us…? I don’t even remember what we did to stop talking to one another, but, seeing you do your thing… And then, Hannah appeared and, I thought being with someone could be great for me… I just didn’t want to be on my own. After Nan died...” He blinked his eyes furiously, trying not to cry the few tears left for his Nan. “I’m starting to believe I’m cursed with the female sex.”

“You’re not...”

“Of course I am. First of all, my mum. We’ve had to do something really wrong so she had to leave. Afterwards, you.”

“What do you mean, me? What have I done?”

“Be in my head. All the fucking time. Shit, I felt really bad after we... after we slept together. I fucking thought you didn’t want to know anything about me. I felt disgusted. We were supposed to be friends and all I did was taking advantage of you.”

“You didn’t...”

“Yes, I did. I wasn’t supposed to do that. You were my friend, and you still are.” He grabbed Rae’s hand once again, touching her fingers softly with his own. “We wouldn’t be here if I’ve done the right thing from the beginning.”

“I guess I was afraid of being rejected, again. Having sex is not something good friends normally do, haven’t they? I felt disgusted.”

“By me, I got it.”

“No… n-not you.” He avoided her eyes, trying not to break himself down in front of her. “Fuck!” His first tear ran down through his face, collapsing in his jeans. “I was… scared of losing you. You, the only woman left that I really care about… I’m not allowed to losing you. Not because of my silliness or…” And he hugged her.

It cost her a few seconds to answer to that hug. She had needed it a long time ago, when he wasn’t there. Then, why should she hug him now? He left her behind. He didn’t do anything when that Hannah bitch tried to fuck up their friendship (in the end, she won), he used to defend her against her bullies… Although she had to learn to do it herself the last months outside those white walls.

But she had to understand something: It hadn’t been his fault. At least, not the hundred per cent of it. Of course they could have been together if he would have been nice and friendly to her, though it wasn’t the case. Puberty had always been the same as an existential crisis.

She dried his face with her thumbs when she decided the hug was over. Then, after taking a long breath, she spoke:

“This hug… doesn’t mean anything. You know that, don’t you? I have not forgiven you, Finn.”

“I wasn’t thinking otherwise…”

“Rae Earl remembers…” He held her with his arms one more time, giving her one of his strongest hugs.

“Just… Let us be friends again, please.”


	15. Chapter 15

He opened the door trying not to drop their tea on the floor. He took a look around his messy room, catching some of his dirty clothes in his chair. A pair of socks drying on the radiator and his grey underwear with a suspicious spot in one of its sides. He left the tray on top of his desk and went to pick up all his things.

“Sorry for the mess.”

“It’s fine.” She answered quietly.

He left the room with his arms full of clothing and dropt it in the clothing bin downstairs. When he came back, Rae was already unpacking her books and leaving them over the desk. Since Rae had left the hospital, she was in charge of giving Finn extra classes (although he was in a superior level).

“When is your next exam?”

“Tomorrow.”

“What?”

He just shrugged.

“How can you be such a carefree person?”

He shrugged once again, grabbing his brew and drinking some of his tea. He grabbed Rae’s mug and held the liquid in the jar.

“Milk?”

“Yes.” She responded while opening the maths book from the page Finn was supposed to have his exam. “Have you done all these exercises already?”

He took a glimpse of the three exercises from the book and denied with a low voice sign.

“Maybe… I can’t remember.”

“Really?” She raised one of her eyebrows, staring at her friend with a sceptical face in her.

“How could I remember? It’s been months since I did that. First semester… It’s fucking June!”

She took a deep breath and a sip of her tea, preparing a piece of paper with a pencil. She wrote a few numbers in it.

“Alright. I’ll give you ten minutes.” She watched the clock on his wall and waited for him to start writing.

“What’s that?”

“A derivate.”

“Am I supposed to know how to resolve _that_?”

“Yes. And time is running. Tic-tac tic-tac.”

Finn held the piece of paper in his hands, raising his left eyebrow while blinking his eyes constantly. He took a look in his maths book and started writing the first step. Although Rae told him it was going to be ten minutes, he asked for five more.

“I’m glad you’re back at school, you know?”

He felt how her hands tensed on the other corner of the table. He wasn’t expecting any sort of answer, though. It felt like a rhetorical question to him.

“It’s kinda weird coming back to school after… after what happened.” Finn didn’t stare at her, letting her know with that action that he needn’t an explanation. He just wanted to let her know he was happy for her, not to open _the drawer full of shit_. For his luck, she didn’t say anything more.

She crossed her arms above her chest, checking his room in the process. It was like it always was. Full of dirt and posters, although he added a new box full of records.

“Do you mind?” She asked, pointing at the vinyl records. He raised his gaze from the numbers and followed her eyes, nodding.

“Be my guest.”

She ordered him to continue with his duty, resolving the rest exercises left on the book while she put a record on and resting in his bed. She closed her eyes, breathing the music and feeling how it fill her lungs and veins. She began to sing the last lyrics of the song without realising she still was in Finn’s room, not hers.

“Are you okay?” A low voice said from somewhere, after the song finished and the next one started playing on the background of the conversation. She instantly opened her right eye, answering him:

“Yeah, I’m alright.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.” She stood up from his bed and went back to the chair beside Finn. “Have you finished?” She asked, holding the paper and checking his mistakes with a blue pen. “You always fail in the middle of the process, Finn. Have I not told you how derivates work?” She kept speaking words and numbers and methods he couldn’t even understand, so he felt distracted by his own thoughts.

“It probably hurts me more than you that you don’t love yourself like I do, Rae.”

She remained silent for seconds that happened to be two long minutes. Finn stood still, waiting for any sort of answer from his friend until he saw how she drank all her tea left, although it was already cold.

“You alright?”

She nodded.

“I’m… doing better.” Finn smiled briefly at her. “Therapy helps a lot, actually.”

“I just want to make sure you are okay…” He took a piece of her hair and locked it behind her ear, sweetly. Her face began to redden in an instant and avoided Finn’s gaze, fixing her eyes on the stuff around her.

“You’re my best friend. I… I couldn’t stand losing you too…”

“Oh, stop it! You’re making me blush…” She stretched out her arms and grabbed the book, revising the next exercises. “C’mon. You have to pass an exam and it won’t do it itself!”


End file.
